A ‘panoptical’ or ‘synoptical’ approach to monitoring performance? Local public services in England and the widening accountability gap

This article highlights how recent reforms to the auditing and assessment of local public services in England suggest there will be a shift from panoptical to ‘synoptical’ monitoring approaches. This is because the UK Government has abolished its centralised monitoring regime and instead required local authorities to publish a range of financial and performance datasets online, ostensibly so that citizens can hold organisations to account directly. However, the complexity and raw nature of these data, along with the sidelining of professional auditors, will result in most citizens being either unable or unwilling to undertake this task. As such, the proposed ‘synoptical’ approach will not materialise. Indeed, other legislative changes will mean that outsourcing firms effectively become the new, unaccountable observers of local public sector bodies within an enduring panoptical system. In many cases these companies will then assume responsibility for delivering the same services that they have assessed.     

The effect of mandatory CSR disclosure on firm profitability and social externalities: Evidence from China

We examine how mandatory disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) impacts firm performance and social externalities. Our analysis exploits China's 2008 mandate requiring firms to disclose CSR activities, using a difference-in-differences design. Although the mandate does not require firms to spend on CSR, we find that mandatory CSR reporting firms experience a decrease in profitability subsequent to the mandate. In addition, the cities most impacted by the disclosure mandate experience a decrease in their industrial wastewater and SO₂ emission levels. These findings suggest that mandatory CSR disclosure alters firm behavior and generates positive externalities at the expense of shareholders.     

Competition for goods in buyer-seller networks

Abstract. This paper studies competition in a network and how a network structure determines agents' individual payoffs. It constructs a general model of competition that can serve as a reduced form for specific models. The paper shows how agents' outside options, and hence their shares of surplus, derive from “opportunity paths” connecting them to direct and indirect alternative exchanges. Analyzing these paths, results show how third parties' links affect different agents' bargaining power. Even distant links may have large effects on agents' earnings. These payoff results, and the identification of the paths themselves, should prove useful to further analysis of network structure.     

Improving footprint calculations of small open economies: combining local with multi-regional input–output tables

In a small, open and resource-poor economy, import and export dependency have an ever-growing impact on local policy decisions, which makes local (environmental) policy-makers increasingly depend on global data. This increases the interest in models that link local production and consumption data to global production, trade and environmental data. The recent increase in availability of global environmentally extended multi-regional input-output tables (EE-MRIO tables) provides an opportunity to link them with existing local environmentally extended input-output tables (EE-RIO tables). These combined tables make it possible (1) to analyse the links between local and global production and consumption and (2) to study global value chains, material use and environmental impacts simultaneously. However, estimations using input-output (I–O) analyses contain errors due to imperfect databases. In this article the magnitude of specification, aggregation and time errors are estimated and compared. The results show the need to combine local datasets with multi-regional ones and show that highest detailed (country and sector levels) as well as time series of I–O tables are the way forward for using I–O analyses in local policy-making. The paper provides guidance on trading off investments in model adoption and/or extension and the reliability of estimation results.     

我国食品安全问题的管制经济学分析

管制经济学是经济学的一个重要分支,是解决市场失灵的有效手段之一。近年来,由食品安全问题引发的各种恶性案件不断发生,令人触目惊心。这是经济市场失灵在食品安全方面的具体表现。本文立足于政府管制理论,运用经济学的分析方法解释食品安全的外部性和信息不对称问题,重申市场自身调节的局限性,并由此得出政府进行适当管制的必要性,最后提出相应的政策建议。     

Accounting change and value creation in public services—Do relational archetypes make a difference in improving public service performance?

Evidence points out that the outcome of accounting change in local governments is not simply a matter of ‘corporate’ resource investments and change management activities to accounting system replacement. This paper examines the link between such corporate-level interventions and the patterns of value creation at street-level. It emphasizes a resource- and capability-driven approach to explore processes and consequences of an ‘embedded agency’-effect assigned to the street-level rationale of public service improvement. Considering a logic chain of cause-and-effect sequences, the data analysis provides evidence that corporate and street-level interventions are unique dimensions to signify the multiple patterns of accounting change in local governments. The supplementary effect of cross-functional relationships is also distinguished, considering the relational archetype as a mechanism to explain the emerging outcome state. Recognizing the distinction and the sequential effects of relational archetypes induces a refined typology of accounting change according to its processes and outcomes in local governments. The analysis is based on a comparative case study design to explore accrual accounting introduction in six German municipalities.     

Optimal dividend policy and growth option

We analyse the interaction between the dividend policy and the decision on investment in a growth opportunity of a liquidity constrained firm. This leads us to study a mixed singular control/optimal stopping problem for a diffusion that we solve quasi-explicitly by establishing a connection with an optimal stopping problem. We characterize situations where it is optimal to postpone the distribution of dividends in order to invest at a subsequent date in the growth opportunity. We show that uncertainty and liquidity shocks have an ambiguous effect on the investment decision.