Water Resources in the Asia-Pacific Region: Managing Scarcity

Irrigation, together with improved crop varieties and substantial growth in fertiliser use in the late 1960s through the early 1980s, was a key factor in stimulating strong agricultural growth in much of the Asia-Pacific region. New sources of water are increasingly expensive to exploit, but irrigation continues to be a major catalyst for agricultural growth. In the face of increasing degradation, the maintenance of the water resource base must be a high priority policy objective. This paper reviews the management of water resources in the Asia-Pacific region, for countries with significant irrigated area: Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Korea-DPR, Republic of Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.     

Symmetric and asymmetric committees

This paper studies the assignment of decision makers to two committees that make decisions by a simple majority rule. There is an even number of decision makers at each of the various skill levels and each committee has an odd number of members. Surprisingly, even with the symmetric assumptions in the spirit of Condorcet, a symmetric composition of committees is not always optimal. In other words, decision makers with different skill levels should not generally be evenly divided among the committees. However, in the special case of only two skill levels, it is optimal to compose the committees evenly.     

Dealing with Wicked Issues: Open Strategizing and the Camisea Case

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate, based on an extensive study of the Shell-led Camisea gas project in Peru, how what we believe to be a new approach to dealing with stakeholders, focusing on sense-making and combining industry dynamics and stakeholder empowerment, was developed. The project’s success was measured by the fact that, unlike similar projects around the world, it did not meet with major opposition during its 4-year life span. Those involved in the Camisea project succeeded in creating an open approach to building stakeholder relationships, allowing them to navigate through a number of diverse and challenging socio-political and ecological issues. An integral part of Shell’s approach was acting upon its commitment to high standards of operation and values. The insights from this case clearly indicate that stakeholder management and theorizing can profit from a less controlled, open and sense-making oriented strategizing with stakeholders.     

An oligopoly model of ocean liner shipping

In this paper I develop a simultaneous equations oligopoly model of the regulated international ocean liner shipping industry. The firms act as a cartel to determine price jointly and then set their own quality levels to maximize individual profits. The cartel does not attain monopoly profits, because each conference member myopically determines quality without regard for overall cartel profits. The results indicate that an increase in the number of firms in the cartel will increase both cartel price and quality level. An increase in price will also lead to an increase in quality level.I would like to thank Professors Alamarin Phillips, Robert Summers, and Bruce Allen for their helpful comments on earlier research for my dissertation in the Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania on which this work is based. I am especially grateful to Professor Lawrence J. White for his encouragement and valuable suggestions at various stages of my work.     

CEO Share Ownership and Firm Value

This study examines the effect of CEO ownership on firm performance. The findings suggest that CEO ownership and firm performance are jointly determined. Firm performance affects CEO ownership positively and in turn, CEO ownership has a positive effect on firm performance. Our results also show that firms managed by founder CEOs have better performance and that the CEO duality structure is beneficial in a turbulent environment.     

What Belongs in a Constitution?

The essay argues that the content of constitutions should derive from its political functions: granting stability and legitimacy to government. There are three main candidates for inclusion in constitutions: regime arrangements, human rights, and general credo. All constitutions must include institutional arrangements. The level of detail and entrenchment may vary. There are important reasons for including Bills of rights in constitutions, but attention should be given to their mode of entrenchment and enforcement. Credos should only be included in constitutions if they are widely shared. In principles, constitutions should specify their modes of amendment and enforcement. If a society cannot have a widely-agreed constitution, it may be better to defer its enactment until such broad agreement is possible.     

An Assessment of Competitive Tendering using Transaction Cost Analysis

Competitive tendering is the means by which most goods and services are produced by public bodies: therefore it is important to try to improve it. Transaction cost analysis, in particular the concepts of bounded rationality, asset specificity and opportunism, provided the framework for examining two competitively tendered contracts let by the Government Purchasing Agency (in Northern Ireland). The firms tendering for the contracts were surveyed and interviews were carried out with purchasing staff managing the tendering process. The authors found that the main areas for further improvement in competitive tendering are the availability of information on previous contracts and debriefing, providing a clearer specification of user needs and of quantities.     

Perceived risk and consumer decision making related to health services: a comparative study

It is acknowledged[Weinstein, N. and Nicolich, M. (1993) ‘Correct and Incorrect Interpretations of Correlation Between Risk Perceptions and Risk Behaviours’, Health Psychology, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 235–45.] that with the development of services marketing specifically related to health services comes a need to understand the aspects of consumer risk behaviour. This paper examines differences in perceived risk between health services, general services and goods and will seek to substantiate and develop a previous US study,[Murray, K. B. and Schlacter, J. L. (1990) ‘The Impact of Services Versus Goods on Consumer's Assessment of Perceived Risk and Variability’, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 51–65.] utilising a quantitative methodology with repeated measures and nested factors. The conclusions support the hypotheses that there are significant differences in perceptions of social and psychological risks when purchasing health services. Copyright © 2000 Henry Stewart Publications