Monetary Policy in the Greenspan Era: A Time Series Analysis of Rules vs. Discretion*

Relationships between the Federal funds rate, unemployment, inflation and the long‐term bond rate are investigated with cointegration techniques. We find a stable long‐term relationship between the Federal funds rate, unemployment and the bond rate. This relationship is interpretable as a policy target because deviations are corrected via the Federal funds rate. Deviations of the actual Federal funds rate from the estimated target give simple indications of discretionary monetary policy, and the larger deviations relate to special episodes outside the current information set. A more traditional Taylor‐type target, where inflation appears instead of the bond rate, does not seem congruent with the data.     

Organising the human world: An evolutionary outlook

Based on a concept that the evolution of man and mankind moves in successive phases, each characterised by a certain organisation determined by its scope, this study examines the relationship between external and internal evolutionary factors. It describes the basic evolutionary mechanism of human systems which alternates between stability and mutation, and is similar to that of non-equilibrium physical systems. In the human system this mutation means fluctuations towards a higher, more complex level, and—because of the designing capacity of man—increasingly conscious management of dynamic regimes. This has so far happened at the levels of ecological and social organisation. Now, with fluctuations passing to the level of cultural organisation, we can attempt to design new codes of social ethics, new social institutions, or new social systems.     

Kann der Zins ein Preis für „Warten“ sein?

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Housing and spatial orientation

Summary The paper focuses on location decisions of households as a problem of integrating them into a network of relations in space. Spatial activity patterns and social contacts are accounted for. The approaches developed reveal how residential location decisions shape land use and, on the other hand, how urban structure influences location decisions. The basic model dealing with a monocentric setting is extended to comprise more than one point of spatial orientation. Finally, it is applied to an urban structure characterized by subcentres. The results are in line with outcomes drawn from empirical works in the field of social area analysis.     

The processes of defining corporate responsibility: a study of Swedish garment retailers' responsibility

Despite extensive research on corporate responsibility, little research exists on how the inter‐organizational processes of defining corporate responsibility develop. In this paper, we present a framework based on actor‐network theory (ANT) for analysing these processes. The developed framework is illustrated in a study of the redefinition of Swedish garment retailers' responsibilities for workers' rights at suppliers' factories between 1996 and 2004. We show that definition processes can be characterized as battles for the right to interpretation, and that traditionally non‐dominant actors can, at least temporarily, win these battles and dictate the development of the processes for defining corporate responsibility. We also show that definition processes can take an exclusionary form prohibiting certain actors from participating. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Rater Bias and Incentive Provision

The tendency of supervisors to judge an employee as either good or bad and then to seek out evidence supporting that earlier established opinion is regarded as one of the major problems of performance appraisal. We investigate the implications of this rater bias in a dynamic moral hazard model with a wealth‐constrained agent. Although rater bias weakens the agent's incentives to exert effort in late periods, at the same time it strengthens implicit incentives in early periods. Under the optimal contract, as long as rater bias is not overly strong, its adverse effect on late‐period incentives is fully offset by exploitation of stronger early‐period incentives and thereby leaves the principal's profits unchanged.