EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION IN POLLUTION REDUCTION: A SOCIO-TECHNICAL PERSPECTIVE

Is industrial pollution reduction solely a matter of applying technical solutions to technical problems, or do organizational strategies and human factors also play an important part? In 1991 the US Environmental Protection Agency began collecting data on organizational strategies in pollution control as part of its Toxic Release Inventory database. An exploratory analysis of the 1991–1992 Toxic Release Inventory data revealed evidence that internally based, socially driven organizational strategies such as employee participation can have a dramatic impact on pollution reduction. The results are reported here of the second phase of this research: the approach is broadened to define general ‘internal’ versus ‘external’ strategies, and ‘social’ versus ‘technical’ approaches. There is strong evidence that the combination of internal and external strategies is superior to either alone; there is even stronger evidence that a socio-technical approach is better than either alone, and still stronger support for a combination of all of these criteria.     

Selecting Pesticides and Nonchemical Alternatives: Green Thumbs' Rules of Thumb Decision Tools

This study of a sample of home gardeners indicates that rules of thumb, or heuristics, are used to select between chemical pesticides and nonchemical alternatives. Such rules of thumb serve to simplify otherwise complicated choice decisions. Heuristics commonly used to choose pesticides include how safe, effective, efficacious, and economical they are, whereas for alternative products consumers more often take into account convenience, efficiency, competency, and handiness. Generally, in an overall ranking of 24 individual choice attributes, pesticies rank low on these attributes where alternatives rank high and vice versa. Gender, age, and years using pesticides are significantly correlated with pesticide selection.     

政府分权促进了政策创新吗?

传统观点认为,政府分权因考虑到了地方政府所进行的一些同步实验而促进了政策创新。然而,这里却忽视了一个学习外部性问题：成功的政策实验为所有政府提供了有用的信息。虽然地方政府忽视了它。但中央政府却不应该如此。本文使用社会学习模型对集权和分权情况下的政策创新进行了比较。结论是：倘若地方政府相对同质或者数量较大,集权将比分权导致更多的政策创新;而如果有多种实验政策可供利用的话,分权也许会比集权能引发更多的政策创新。     

Does technology licensing matter for privatization?

In mixed oligopolies, technology licensing from a cost‐efficient firm to a cost‐inefficient firm has been widely observed. This paper examines the relationship between privatization and licensing (by public or private firms) with the consideration of either a domestic or a foreign private firm. We find that (a) in the case of a domestic private firm, public licensing facilitates privatization, but private licensing hinders privatization; (b) in the case of a foreign private firm, both public and private licensing facilitate privatization. Our results yield important policy implications on privatization.