Public Sector Organizations and Cocreation With Citizens: A Literature Review on Benefits,Drivers, and Barriers

ABSTRACT

Cocreation has captured the attention of public managers and policymakers and yet the literature focusing in the public sector is still relatively dispersed. In this literature review we present a contextualized analysis of the potential reasons that lead public sector organizations to cocreate with citizens and identify potential barriers that may hamper the adoption of cocreation in public settings. The analysis undertaken allowed us to conclude that the topic is increasingly capturing the interest of researchers, although the state of the literature is characterized by a reduced heterogeneity in research methods. We classified cocreation benefits in the public sector as innovation related, improved decision-making, and symbolic related, and we categorized the drivers for cocreation according to three broad categories: external, relation-specific and internal. Finally, we identified potential barriers of cocreation, including structural, organizational, and behavioral barriers.     

Social Security and Old Age Unemployment Risk with Efficient Wage Bargaining

I analyze a life‐cycle economy with old age productivity risk where wages, employment, and severance payments are set through efficient bargaining between risk averse unions and risk neutral firms. Allocations with limited union membership are second‐best inefficient as they generate too little labor supply in young age, too much consumption before retirement, too little employment of older workers (early retirement), and too little insurance against old age unemployment. Providing public transfers to early retirees (disability benefits or early pensions) might help to increase the degree of risk sharing at the cost of lower old age employment. Depending on whether absolute risk aversion is increasing or decreasing in consumption, these policies might or might not produce efficiency gains at equilibrium.     

乳化炸药在深水区爆破应用研究与经济分析

在深水高压区,采用乳化炸药爆破法一次性拆除碾压混凝土围堰尚无先例。本文论述了乳化炸药水下爆破性能以及起爆网络设计、生产性试验等技术,并对经济效益进行了评估。     

INVESTMENT BEHAVIOUR,CORPORATE CONTROL,AND PRIVATE BENEFITS OF CONTROL: EVIDENCE FROM A SURVEY OF UKRAINIAN FIRMS

We analyse the impact of ownership and corporate control on firms’ investment using the 2001 survey of Yacoub et al. on Ukrainian firms. The model explains investment by output, financial and soft budget constraints, and corporate control (and ownership) categories potentially enjoying private benefits of control. We find that the corporate control model fits better than the ownership model, a negative relationship between state and employee control and firms’ investment, and evidence for the presence of soft budget constraints. A negative relationship between firms’ investment and the relative size of non‐monetary transactions strengthens the conclusion of private benefits of control impacting investment.     

One size may not fit all: Welfare benefits and cost reductions with optional differentiated household electricity rates

We consider optional time-of-use (TOU) pricing for residential consumers, offered by a publicly regulated electricity supplier, as an alternative to a single TOU or flat rate structure. An equilibrium model explores and quantifies the effects of such pricing on welfare, consumption, and production costs. The supplier offers to each household a menu of possible rate structures obtained by maximizing a collective welfare function subject to three restrictions: Pareto efficiency, incentive compatibility, sufficiency of supplier revenue to cover costs. Simulations based on realistic calibration of the model demonstrate that optional pricing can increase overall consumer welfare and reduce average cost.     

Can investors of Chinese energy stocks benefit from diversification into commodity futures?

We attempt to evaluate the diversification potential of commodity futures for energy stocks in China. With a variety of copula functions and three risk-based dynamic measures, our results show that even though commodity futures are not helpful in improving the risk-adjusted returns of energy stocks, they can significantly reduce the volatilities and expected-shortfalls of the diversified portfolios. Such diversification benefits are much larger during large market downturns than during normal times. In particular, gold (copper) futures are the most (least) attractive in diversifying risks of energy stocks in most cases. The results also highlight that the non-linear dependence cannot be ignored when estimating the diversification benefits, and more various risk hedging strategies are expected for investors holding energy stocks, especially coal company stocks.     

AN ANALYSIS OF THE WELFARE CUTS IN THE COMPREHENSIVE SPENDING REVIEW AND THE BUDGET 2010

In the Comprehensive Spending Review and in the Budget 2010, the Liberal–Conservative coalition has announced cost‐cutting measures in the benefit system. Some of these measures can be interpreted as ‘random cuts’, where the given scope and structure of a spending programme is retained, while bits and pieces are chopped off here and there. Others can be interpreted as more strategic measures, or reconsiderations of the proper role of government in the respective area. However, where the coalition has pursued a more strategic approach, it has not followed it through consistently. The coalition's consolidation strategy relies too much on temporary caps and freezes, which will eventually expire and give way to renewed spending pressures.     

Sample bias in contingent valuation: A comparison of the correction methods

Abstract

This article compares various methods for correcting contingent valuation aggregate benefits when the sample is known to be biased. A sample is defined as the population, and response rates are simulated on the basis of a measure of salience. The simulated response rates suffer from nonresponse bias and selection bias. Coefficient and benefit estimates that result from weighting and self‐selection correction approaches are compared with the true coefficient and benefit estimates. Our results indicate that at both low and high response rates the standard approach leads to bias, and either correction approach will reduce the bias in coefficient and benefit estimates.     

实施绿色经营 提高工厂化农业企业经济效益

实施绿色经营是国际公认的企业发展方向,也是确保社会经济可持续发展的有效途径。工厂化农业企业实施绿色经营即能满足社会和市场的需要,也能够降低生产成本,提高经济效益,同时也是注重可持续发展,实现自身价值最大化的必然选择。     

中国失业保险制度改革方向:纳入社会救助——基于历史背景与功能定位的分析

失业保险在建立和长期发展过程中,具有缓和劳资矛盾、天然双向平滑经济波动、提供失业保障和平滑个人收入的基本功能。但随着各国劳动保护及福利制度的发展,失业保险在政治和经济方面的功能减弱,且其失业收入损失补偿功能常常引发失业陷阱,于是各国进行了以促进积极就业为导向的改革。中国失业保险制度曾经为经济体制转型起到了“减震器”的作用。随着劳动保护和社会保障制度的发展和政府就业政策的完善,在二元就业结构、户籍制度、公共部门人力资源管理制度及政府承担就业促进任务的影响下,我国失业保险的政治、经济、失业人口收入补偿、就业促进功能未能有效发挥。在比较了若干改革方案后,本文认为,取消失业保险并将其功能并入社会救助体系是新时代背景下我国失业保险制度的最优改革路径。