Overzicht van Buitenlandsche Tijdschriften

Jaartal en blz. achter de namen der tijdschriften hebben betrekking op de plaats, waar deze laatstelijk in De Economist werden behandeld.     

Distributional Coalitions,the Industrial Revolution,and the Origins of Economic Growth in Britain

From the late 1600s to the mid 1800s, Britain was able to transform from a divided kingdom with a fragmented, often stagnant economy into a powerful and stable state that simultaneously saw an expansion in the power, wealth, and stability of the central government while encouraging an economic transformation that gradually allowed both industrial technology and liberal commerce to flourish and break out of its mercantilist straitjacket. We explain how rent-seeking elites who might normally have opposed such sweeping transformations promoted institutional changes that, in the long run, expanded the economy and encouraged innovation even at the expense of class interests. In the short run, this meant that rent-seeking in the 18th century was not so much reduced as redirected from local monopolies to state authorities and Parliament. But in the longer run, the process of professionalization made possible greater liberalism in general, even at the expense of general rent-seeking itself. The position of Parliament as a meta-institution for reforming and weakening rent-creating restrictions as needed was pivotal to this process. Ideological changes—particularly the Scottish enlightenment—transformed the terms of the debate but could only be operationalized once interests were aligned so that gainers from industrialization could compensate or overcome traditional interests.     

The transition to an oil contraction economy

A normative analysis of the problem of optimal extraction of a nonrenewable resource is considered. The economy depends on the essential nonrenewable resource and the rate of the resource extraction is increasing over time. At some point the government gradually switches to a sustainable (in sense of non-decreasing consumption over time) pattern of the resource extraction. Different approaches are offered for the construction of the paths of switching to decreasing resource use. Some seemingly attractive short-run policies of switching to decreasing extraction can run counter to long-run criteria. If we consider the maximin principle, applied to the negative shock on the output percent change, as the short-run criterion, then the optimal transition path can be consistent with the long-run government goals. It is shown analytically and numerically that there are values of parameters for the transition paths of extraction that consumption along these paths is asymptotically constant or infinitely growing. A new approach to the Rawlsian maximin criterion which allows for growth of consumption is offered.     

Private Equity vs. PLC Boards in the U.K.: A Comparison of Practices and Effectiveness

The consistently higher returns generated by the most successful private equity firms have been attributed in part to their willingness to take on high levels of debt and their ability to exit from their investments at attractive multiples. But recent research suggests that the largest contributor to the superior performance of the best PE firms has been their ability to improve the operating performance of the companies they buy. And as the authors of this article argue, a key source of such improvements are fundamental differences in the way boards function in the public and private realm.
Using in-depth interviews with 20 executives who have served on both PE and plc boards of relatively large U.K. companies, the authors provide a number of suggestive insights into such differences:
Perhaps the most visible of these differences is the "single-minded" focus of PE boards on "value creation," as contrasted with the focus of plc boards on issues of "governance" and "compliance."
Whereas PE boards view their role as "leading" the strategy of the firm and overseeing its execution by top management, plc boards are described as "monitoring" or "accompanying" strategies that are proposed and executed by management.
Whereas PE boards report near-complete alignment of objectives between executive and non-executive directors, plc boards are described as having multiple commitments to and priorities that are divided among multiple stakeholders.
Finally, whereas PE board members undergo an intensive "due diligence" process when joining boards, have frequent ongoing contacts with management, and focus heavily on the cash-generating capacity of the business, initiations of plc board members are much more formal and ceremonial, their dealings with operating management are few and limited, and the information provided them has an "accounting" orientation and covers a broad range of subjects and corporate "responsibilities."     

Functional components of public expenditure,fiscal consolidations,and economic activity

This paper analyses how the functional components of public expenditure and spending‐driven consolidations affect the economic growth, unemployment, and income inequality. A dynamic panel data least squares dummy variable estimator estimator is employed over a sample of 15 European Union countries during the period 1990–2012. The empirical results show that real GDP growth decreases when fiscal austerity measures are implemented, especially if they are spending‐driven. Cuts in public expenditure undermine economic growth, namely if they slash spending on public order, recreation, and education. Spending cuts on education, in particular, affect the investment in human capital, harming not only growth but also economic, social, and human development. The unemployment rate also proved to be significantly boosted when austerity measures restrict spending on education, whereas income inequality rises when social protection expenditures are cut.     

Inflation Volatility with Regime Switching

This paper presents a new approach to model U.S. inflation dynamics by allowing regime switching in an unobserved components stochastic volatility framework. We use a modified particle filter to construct likelihood and estimate the model using MLE. The number of regimes is determined based on a bootstrap. We find that a model with three regimes and regime‐dependent constant volatilities has superior performance. In addition, we show that since 2000:II, U.S. inflation has entered a regime with moderate volatility where most of the volatility comes from transitory shocks.     

A contextual analysis of the impact of managerial expectations on asymmetric cost behavior

Review of Accounting Studies - We examine the effect of managerial expectations on asymmetric cost behavior in the context of resource adjustment costs and unused resource constraints. Our results...     

An Ongoing race: family CEOs vs. non-family CEOs

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - Recent studies have established that non-family CEOs invariably outperform family CEOs. In this paper, we argue that the case against family...     

Veblen,Veblenian Social Practices,and Prosperity Theology

Abstract:

At the turn of the twentieth century (1910), Veblen published an essay which explored the relationship between Christianity and capitalism by focusing on the interaction between the two institutions as they evolved. Veblen’s analysis begins by detailing the evolution of Christianity prior to the age of industrialized capitalism, after which he explores the evolutionary interplay between the two. Just over ten years prior to the publication of this essay (1899), Veblen published the Theory of the Leisure Class while over ten years after the publication of the essay (1923), Veblen dissected the sales efforts of Christianity in a note titled “Salesmanship and the Churches.” Nearly 100 years later, these three works together explain a modern and distinctly American religious movement—Prosperity Theology. This research argues that Prosperity Theology as practiced in the United States over the past nearly half century embodies and integrates all three of these works by Veblen and proposes the conceptual term “Veblenian Social Practice.”     

Problems of developing and transition economies

ABSTRACT

The Solow growth model was extended to account for the graft by corrupt individuals from domestic savings, which could have been used for productive capital accumulation, the productive stock of capital to be augmented by foreign direct investment (FDI), and the expatriation by FDI international investors. The results indicate that higher levels of FDI inflows, savings rates, and more advanced technology embedded productive capital would result in higher steady-state per capita productive capital to labor ratio. The graft from domestic savings, expatriation of FDI, and growth rate of labor negatively affect steady-state per capita productive capital to labor ratio.