Mobilizing crisis management networks — Entrepreneurial behavior in turbulent contexts

Severe socio-economic issues that threaten peace, life or wellbeing of humans in specific regions of the world cannot be solved by any single actor. Wide networks of political, business, governmental, non-profit and humanitarian organizations are to be involved to change existing practices. Despite conflicting interests and competing behavior, involved organizations need to act collectively to initiate the change of commonly accepted practices, i.e. institutions. This is the space in the present study for examining network mobilization as a collective means to change institutions. Our aim is to answer the question: How are networks mobilized in crisis management to initiate institutional change processes in socio-economically turbulent contexts? We provide a framework of network mobilization for institutional change built on the IMP rooted network mobilization research and institutional entrepreneurship discussion. The framework is reflected upon by means of insights from an interview-based case study with representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations involved in worldwide humanitarian peace-building. We identify, firstly, incentivizing, reticent and adaptational behaviors of network mobilizers to utilize legitimacy and relationship sediments as mobilization enablers. Secondly, these behaviors help network mobilizers to overcome actor visibility and unpredictability as mobilization obstacles in turbulent contexts.     

Pareto Index Estimation Under Moderate Right Censoring

Real claim data sometimes are censored from above at a high value induced by the sum insured. In this note we examine the behaviour of extreme-value methods in such settings and propose an adaptation of the popular Hill (1975) estimator. It is argued that the censoring typically cannot exceed 5% for an effective use of the methods suggested.     

Corporate credit,stock price inflation and economic fluctuations

This study analyses the empirical interaction between real corporate credit, real income, real stock prices, the short-term interest rate and inflation for the Netherlands and the USA. The framework is based on a five-variable structural vector error correction model which identifies the permanent and temporary shocks within the system. Erratic shocks in the real amount of corporate credit and in stock prices could potentially have some impact on inflation in the case of the USA and on real output in the Netherlands. However, the structural VAR analysis also shows that the above-mentioned erratic shocks only explain a small proportion of the variation in inflation and economic activity, and inflation objective shifts and supply side shocks are much more important determinants for economic fluctuations.     

Transaction Costs and Cattle Marketing: The Information Content of Seller-Provided Presale Data at Bull Auctions

At sales of breeding bulls, prospective buyers have strong incentives to undertake presale measurement activities. To reduce these transaction costs, sellers often provide information on sale bulls. We examine the information content of two measures of the expected performance of the bulls and find that within a given herd, older, simpler measures of performance contain more information about prices (from buyers' perspectives) than newer, more sophisticated measures known as expected progeny differences, or EPDs. We also find, however, that buyers appear to pay considerable attention to annual changes in herd-average EPD values when comparing animals from different sellers.     

Managed Mental Health Care: Stakeholder Effects and Policy Implications

ABSTRACT: During the past several years, healthcare delivery in the United States has shifted from a primarily fee-for-service system toward managed care. Mental health care has been affected disproportionately by this trend. The existing literature on managed mental health care is abundant, but narrowly focused. The purpose of this study is to take a broader public-policy approach, considering simultaneously the effects on system stakeholders: patients, providers, employers, insurers, and society.     

Is Financial Stress an Incentive for the Adoption of Businesslike Planning and Control in Local Government? A Comparative Study of Eight Dutch Municipalities

Hood has formulated the hypothesis that financial stress is a motive for the adoption of New Public Management (NPM), and particularly of businesslike instruments and styles in government. He has illustrated this hypothesis on a macro-level by comparing different OECD countries. The aim of this paper is to make a start with a micro-level test of this hypothesis by studying individual governmental organization, i.e. eight municipalities in the Netherlands. The financial stress hypothesis has been operationalised by assuming a negative relationship between the financial position of a municipality and the existence of businesslike planning and control instruments. The research shows that there is no evidence for the existence of this relationship. However, a conclusive judgement about the financial stress hypothesis seems to be impossible due to the fact that non-technical aspects of NPM were not taken into account, and also because of an – on average – upward bias in the financial position of the municipalities in the empirical investigation.     

Block Rate Pricing of Water in Indonesia: An Analysis of Welfare Effects

Block rate pricing of piped water in Indonesian cities has a progressive structure: the marginal price paid increases with the volume of demand. This paper estimates household water demand in Salatiga city using the Burtless and Hausman model, and finds that its distribution is not unimodal—that data cluster around kinks. The main estimation results are a price elasticity of approximately–1.2 and an income elasticity of 0.05. These elasticities are mutually dependent. The estimated model is used to investigate the social welfare consequences of a shift to uniform pricing. The principal beneficiaries would be large households, which are not necessarily wealthy. While replacing the complex rate structure by a uniform marginal price would have positive effects on average welfare, the equity consequences would be small. To improve equity, water companies could reduce installation fees, giving low-income households access to water connections, or reinvest profits in network expansion to unserviced areas.     

Shaken or Stirred? Financial Deregulation and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism in Norway

Is there a credit channel for monetary policy? Has the deregulation of financial markets had any temporary or permanent effects on the monetary transmission mechanism? We present empirical evidence on these issues for Norway by estimating a dynamic system of money, credit, real income and inflation. We find that the deregulation process has not caused any permanent shifts in the long‐run demand functions. Within a small simultaneous dynamic model, there is some evidence for the credit view of the monetary transmission mechanism, as both credit and money exhibit strong and stable effects on aggregate demand. JEL classification: E50; E44; C51