Bureaucratic privilege as an issue in Chinese politics

Since December 1978, social policy in China has followed a more openly elitist direction than in any period since 1949. The conservative drift in many policies is unmistakable, but in one respect there is concern — Party opposition to the rapid growth of bureaucratic privilege and abuse of political position. Mao had struck harshly at non-Party intellectuals, urban entrepreneurs, scientists and politically inactive youth. These groups are part of the social base for the new top leadership. A set of demobilizing reforms and purges aimed to route the radical leaders have been ordered by the Deng faction to intimidate their followers, as well as to discredit the mass-campaign style of work in order to replace it with orthodox Party-state structures. Some resistance has followed, but the increasing privatization of the economy created an absolutely larger petty-bourgeoisie which formed a new social layer supporting Deng. Generous back-pay and compensation for those weeded out by the Cultural Revolution gave a material basis for new inequalities. Upper-class communists were once again able to organize privileged, elitist education for their progeny. Finally, economic policy, including the new tolerance of patriotic Hong Kong capitalists, gave a new lease of life to entrepreneurs, some with foreign ties. A coalition of Party bureaucrats, civil servants, academics and businessmen has little time for socialist egalitarianism and Mao's radicalism.     

Land use in a circular city: Some numerical results

In a previous paper (“Land Use in a Circular City”, Journal of Economic Theory, 1974), I considered efficient land use and travel patterns in a circular city consisting of a homogeneous economic activity and a network of radial and circumferential roads. My analysis assumed that under decentralized optimum conditions, the price of traveling circumferentially through a radian would increase with distance from the city center. Under this and a second pricing assumption, an optimum would involve either restricting inward trip penetration or providing travelers with an inner ring road. This paper provides numerical illustrations of the optimum when trip penetration is restricted. The results suggest that the underlying pricing assumptions are likely not valid.     

The impact of the corporate balanced scorecard on corporate control—A research note

The paper explores the adoption of the corporate balanced scorecard (CBSC) and its impact on corporate control of business units. Following interviews with senior corporate managers in 15 of Sweden's largest multinational companies, 8 were found to adopt CBSC. However, CBSC had little impact on control at the corporate level. Corporate control was financially focused in all the companies: mainly financial measures were important, standards were only set for financial measures and rewards were largely based on financial performance measures. Top management's need for simplicity and comparability internally, and capital market pressures motivated the financial focus.     

Asset pricing with unforeseen contingencies

We investigate an economy of heterogeneous agents that cannot specify all exogenous welfare-relevant events and consequently view the impact of unforeseen contingencies as utility shocks. In this setting we characterize an appropriate market equilibrium concept when securities can trade only on demand- and price-contingent events. We establish the existence of an equilibrium for a class of parametric models in which aggregating taste shocks across agents can lead to nonconsumption pricing factors. To fit the stylized facts, (i) non consumption factors must dominate the pricing kernel and contribute to the variation of the wealth-consumption ratio, (ii) markets must be incomplete and the set of claims that are traded endogenously determined, (iii) agents’ preferences with respect to unforeseen contingencies must be non-expected utility, and, (iv) although non-consumption pricing factors can be conditionally uncorrelated with aggregate consumption shocks, they must be correlated with shocks to expected consumption growth.     

Common political culture: Evidence on regional corruption contagion

Although there are indications of common regional corruption characteristics, empirical studies of corruption have assumed that influences on corruption are country-specific. In this paper we report evidence based on a cross-section of 123 economies confirming that, with few specific exceptions, corruption is a regional phenomenon. Institutional change that reduces corruption in one country affects, therefore, neighboring countries.     

Interne Märkte im Versicherungsvertrieb – Konzeptionelle Überlegungen zu einem aktuellen Themenfeld

Societal and technological developments (i.e. expansion of the use of the Internet) continue to challenge insurance product distribution. These trends have lately given rise to a stronger market orientation in sales controlling and management. This paper discusses these trends and develops a conceptual framework for evaluating the advantages and disadvantages that follow from the implementation of so-called internal markets. The analysis concludes that a stronger market orientation is not only relevant for business units close to the sales force, but may also increase pressure on the insurance company as a whole to improve its customer orientation. The same holds with respect to innovative products and the efficient use of available resources.     

The interdependencies of intra- and inter-organisational controls and work practices—The case of domestic care of the elderly

The paper gives a grounded account of inter-organisational controls and work practices in the public sector to complement previous literature's strong focus on inter-organisational customer–supplier relationships in the private sector. We draw theoretically on Hopwood's (1974) administrative, social and self controls, which enable us to analyse the influence of non-managerial controls on behaviour. Empirically, a case study of inter-organisational cooperation between home help units and health centres is used as the basis of analysis. Most inter-organisational controls were developed locally and involved a mix of administrative, social and self controls. Intra- and inter-organisational social and self controls were important forms of control which impacted on intra- and inter-organisational work practices and we see the need for a broad conceptualisation of control (Van der Meer-Kooistra and Scapens, 2008). Inter-organisational social controls created an informal hierarchy that by-passed the formal hierarchies of the two organisations. Self controls reinforced the importance of being flexible to accommodate pensioner's wishes and needs in specific care situations. We also show the importance of the internal financial situation of home help units for the analysis of the interdependencies of intra- and inter-organisational controls and work practices.