Entrepreneurs,formalization of social ties,and trustbuilding in Europe (fourteenth to twentieth centuries)1

The establishment of trust is a key component of economic activity and social ties can make business dealings work better. However, we do not know much about how economic actors created new social ties deliberately in order to pursue their objectives. This article analyses the way in which merchants and entrepreneurs used specific rituals to establish formal social ties, with the intent of protecting their business relationships. It focuses on relational instruments that until now had been neglected, particularly godparenthood and marriage witnessing. It shows that formalization, ritualization, and publicity of ties were used by entrepreneurs to establish trust with their business associates, for example when information was asymmetric or when institutions were perceived as inefficient in guaranteeing mutual good behaviour. The analysis covers a long period, from the late middle ages to today. It pays particular attention to the consequences of the Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and of the industrial revolution in the nineteenth. Contrary to the received wisdom, it suggests that formal social ties such as godparenthood continued to play an important role in economic activity during and after the industrial revolution. New databases on early modern Italy and nineteenth‐century France are used.     

Permitting Protest: Parsing the Fine Geography of Dissent in America

The ability to dissent and to protest is a cornerstone of western liberal democracies. But dissent always threatens to exceed its bounds and to become a threat. The issue facing liberal states, then, has not only been how to incorporate dissent, but also how to shape dissent. In this project, the politics of public space has assumed a central role, as material public spaces have become a primary venue for the shaping of dissent. This article examines the ways in which dissent is incorporated into the liberal democratic state through a case study of protest in Washington, DC. In that city, as in others throughout North America and Western Europe, protest permit systems have evolved as a bureaucratic means to actively shape, if not directly control, public dissent. And yet, even as permit systems are becoming fully regularized, debates over their legitimacy suggest that geographically based permit systems might be inadequate to the task of incorporating dissent. As we indicate, recent protest activity shows just how important geography is to regulating, incorporating and policing dissent, even as those protests expose just how blunt and how fragile a tool that geography is. Pouvoir être en désaccord et le manifester est l’une des pierres angulaires des démocraties libérales occidentales. Pourtant, le désaccord risque toujours de dépasser ses limites pour devenir une menace. La difficulté rencontrée par les États libéraux n’était pas tant d’intégrer la divergence d’opinion que de la façonner. Dans ce projet, la politique d’espace public a joué un rôle central, les espaces publics physiques étant devenus un site primordial pour ce façonnage. Les méthodes d’intégration du désaccord dans l’État démocratique libéral apparaissent à travers l’étude de cas de la protestation à Washington DC. Là, comme dans d’autres villes d’Amérique du Nord et d’Europe de l’Ouest, les systèmes d’autorisation de manifestation ont évolué en un moyen bureaucratique de façonner effectivement, si ce n’est maîtriser directement, le dissentiment public. Pourtant, tandis que ces systèmes se régularisent totalement, la mise en cause de leur légitimité suggère que les régimes d’autorisation de type géographique seraient inappropriés pour intégrer le désaccord. Récemment, l’activité de protestation a démontré l’importance de la géographie pour réguler, intégrer et contrôler le dissentiment, même si ces manifestations révèlent aussi combien la géographie est un outil limité et fragile.     

CONSUMER PROTECTION,CONSUMERS AND BUSINESS

This paper is based on a speech given to an OYEZ-IBC Conference in London on 10 November 1979. It argues that U.K. consumers and business generally have benefited from recent changes in the law. The ‘backlash’ against consumer protection legislation by some elements in business is wholly misguided.     

Rent Royalties*

On neutrality grounds, royalties designed to tax only the economic rent of mining or petroleum operations are preferable to royalty schemes currently used in Australia. The Resource Rent type of royalty generally has a predictable but asymmetrical effect on the probability distribution of the net present value of projects being considered for investment. This effect is independent of the characteristics of individual projects, and so with appropriate selection of the operating parameters, this royalty scheme would not greatly affect the screening of projects for investment purposes.     

PORTFOLIO ALLOCATION IN THE FACE OF A MEANS‐TESTED PUBLIC PENSION

We investigate whether households adjust their asset portfolios just prior to retirement in ways that are consistent with maximizing eligibility for a means‐tested public pension. We utilize detailed micro data for a nationally‐representative sample of Australian households to estimate a system of asset equations which are constrained to add up to net worth. Our results provide little evidence that healthy households or couples are responding to the incentives embedded in the means tests determining pension eligibility by reallocating assets. While there are some differences in asset portfolios associated with having an income near the income threshold, being of pensionable age, and being in poor health, these differences are often only marginally significant and are not clearly consistent with the incentives inherent in the Australian age pension eligibility rules. Any behavioral response to the incentives inherent in the age‐pension means test appears to be predominately concentrated among single pensioners who are in poor health.     

Diffusion of Management Accounting Practices in Gulf Cooperation Council Countries*

This study examines how management accounting practices (MAPs) have been adopted and diffused by publicly listed firms in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The results of our survey show that the adoption rates for MAPs in the area of cost management and strategy are low while those in the area of performance measurement are moderate. Overall, the respondents favorably perceived their success in implementing MAPs. Power and politics, not economic (or cost–benefit) reasons, were considered to be the most influential reasons for nonadoption of MAPs. The results provide partial support to the view that there is a global convergence of management accounting system designs and ideas and also indicate that the role of cultural differences is diminishing over time.