MACROPRUDENTIAL POLICY – A LITERATURE REVIEW

The recent financial crisis has highlighted the need to go beyond a purely micro approach to financial regulation and supervision. As a consequence, the number of policy speeches, research papers and conferences that discuss a macro perspective on financial regulation has grown considerably. The policy debate is focusing in particular on macroprudential tools and their usage, their relationship with monetary policy, their implementation and their effectiveness. Macroprudential policy has recently also attracted considerable attention among researchers. This paper provides an overview of research on this topic. We also identify important future research questions that emerge from both the literature and the current policy debate.     

Neoliberalization,Housing Institutions and Variegated Gentrification: How the ‘Third Wave’ Broke in Amsterdam

Neil Smith argues that in the last two decades gentrification has become a generalized global urban phenomenon. His theory is at a high level of abstraction, as it links urban gentrification to globalization, financial capitalism and neoliberalization. With these global processes, all cities have experienced ‘third wave’ gentrification. The theory, however, leaves little room for variegations of gentrification, apart from characterizing geographical differences as idiosyncrasies or as minor variations. This downplays the role of intervening mechanisms that impinge upon the pursuit and social outcomes of gentrification. This article aims to amend abstract theory by looking at Amsterdam from a historical institutional perspective. In Amsterdam, gentrification was particularly made possible by a process of neoliberalization within the housing system. However, as institutional change is incremental and based on layering and conversion, many older institutional arrangements remain in place. These arrangements tend to slow gentrification and assuage social consequences. Nevertheless, neoliberal modifications to the housing system have been accelerating the pursuit of gentrification. Current policies will very likely lead to exclusionary displacement.     

Planning Discourse versus Land Discourse: The 2009–12 Reforms in Land‐Use Planning Policy and Land Policy in Israel

Land policy and land‐use planning policy are two types of public policy pertaining to space. In general, land‐use planning policy deals with land‐use allocation and property rights, whereas land policy defines the land regime of a society. These differences have shaped a unique discourse for each of these policy types. The purpose of this article is to examine the differences and similarities between the land discourse and the planning discourse by analyzing two public campaigns conducted in Israel against two proposed reforms: the 2009 reform of the Israel Land Administration and the 2010–12 reform of the Planning and Building Law. The findings reveal substantive differences between the two campaigns, manifested in the nature of the leading players, the types of public activities they chose, and most notably in the discourses and the hierarchy of considerations they addressed. The findings raise profound questions regarding universal trends in spatial policy reforms; their influence on the activities of public coalitions and the discourses they adopted; possible future effects of these trends on the differences between the land discourse and the planning discourse; and the impact of these trends on the ability of groups and individuals elsewhere to influence spatial policies (such as planning and land policies).     

Planning Histories and Practices of Circulating Urban Knowledge

This symposium creates and stimulates new dialogue and cross‐disciplinary exchange between planning theorists and geographers in researching the transfer of urban policy and planning models, ideas and techniques. The symposium challenges a restricted historical focus in much of the emerging geographical literature on urban policy mobilities by drawing on a rich tradition within planning history of exploring and documenting the trans‐urban travel of planning ideas and models over the last 150 years. It is argued that this longer‐term perspective is required to highlight important historical continuities and institutional legacies to contemporary urban policy circuits and pathways and to question what is particularly new, distinct and innovative about an intensification in the travel of urban ideas, plans and policies over the past decade — and the accompanying scholarly interest in them. The symposium also uses the emphasis on particular details and specific experiences within planning histories to foreground and develop approaches, particularly from recent geographical scholarship, that investigate the contingent and embodied practices and wider epistemic contexts that enable — or hinder — contemporary policy transfer.     

Defensible Space on the Move: Revisiting the Urban Geography of Alice Coleman

This article traces the movement of the concept of ‘defensible space’ from New York City in the 1970s, where it was developed by the Canadian architect/planner Oscar Newman, to London in the 1980s and into design interventions in British public housing in the 1990s, through British geographer Alice Coleman, who acted as an especially powerful transfer agent. In focusing on this urban design ‘concept’ on the move we contribute to existing scholarship on policy mobility and city building in a number of ways. First, we explore an instance of the movement/mobility of a planning concept in a historical period (the recent past) largely overlooked to date. Secondly, we demonstrate that this movement was the result of a disaggregated series of expert knowledge transfers and localized translations of pre‐policy expert knowledge, generated through university‐based research work and networks. We theorize this instance of urban planning mobility by way of the interlinked insights offered by the sociology of science and policy‐mobilities literatures. As this is an instance of university research shaping public policy it also offers an opportunity to reflect upon the meaning of ‘evidence‐based policy’ and the impact agenda in contemporary higher education.     

The ‘old’ and ‘new’ competition and Malaysian manufacturing firms: a case study

The majority of empirical studies dealing with production processes, work organization and industrial relations practices have been conducted in advanced industrial nations. This article reports on a study of the changing nature of work organization and industrial relations policies in the developing economy of Malaysia. It explores the broad patterns of change in human resource management, technology and work organization among Malaysian manufacturing firms in the context of Best's ‘old’ and ‘new’ competition. The question that arises is: does the evidence reveal that Malaysia is embracing elements of the ‘new competition’, or is it still locked into a regime of mass production, or both? The article argues that the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ competition should not be treated as a simple, straightforward duality model of development. The distinction between the two approaches is sometimes blurred and not so clear-cut. The case study observes that both systems could be operating side by side at the same time within an organization. Since the Malaysian manufacturing sector is expected to shift from simple assembly and process-type operations using labour-intensive techniques to the more advanced and higher value-added industries, greater investment in HRD to upgrade the skills of the work-force and the adoption of appropriate industrial relations policies that emphasize decentralization, greater employee involvement and continuous innovation will become crucial. To be able to compete successfully in the global economy would require a change in focus in the adoption of industrial relations and human resource development policies. For Malaysia to realize its aspiration to become an industrialized and developed nation by the year 2020 would require radical changes in those policies within the context of an integrated approach to economic and industrial planning.     

在铁路货运营销中运用价格策略的探讨

价格是市场营销组合的重要因素。铁路货物运价制度运用得当与否直接关系着吸引运量的多少和使路运输企业利润的高低。并影响着运输市场营销组合的其它因素。根据营销环境的变化，灵活调整价格，科学制定价格策略，才能使企业获得最佳的经济效益。本文通过分析现行运价体系存在的问题，就如何在铁路货运营销活动中运用价格策略进行了探讨。     

Growth,deficits and uncertainty: Theoretical aspects and empirical evidence from a panel of 27 countries

We examine the relationship between fiscal deficits and per-capita income growth in a panel of 27 European countries, allowing for perceived risks, in terms of fiscal sustainability, associated with additional government spending. Such risks are proxied by the conditional variability of manufacturing production and stock market returns and by the unconditional variability of two survey-based economic-sentiment indicators. To help clarifying how fiscal variables impact on growth and to provide a point of reference for the interpretation of the empirical results a structural growth model is first identified. We find evidence of an asymmetric relationship, in that fiscal deficits give rise to adverse growth effects if they coincide with high uncertainty regarding the prospects of the economy and no significant negative growth effects in the low-uncertainty case.     

Privatizing Museum Services In Uk Local Authorities

This article investigates the extent to which ‘privatization’ has taken place in museum services provided by local authorities in Britain. Three aspects of privatization are examined: change in the legal status of museums to charitable trusts; contracting-in and buying-in private service providers for specific work; and market- and marketing-orientation. All of these have a resonance in new public management in general and are of increasing significance to the international museum community. In the empirical site chosen for this article, privatization has progressed in varying degrees in relation to the three areas concerned, but overall only to a limited extent despite central government's pressure promoting this policy. Reasons suggested for this gap between the political context and the findings are the distinctiveness in the institutional arrangement of policy and the nature of the service. A good understanding of a polrcy arena along these llnes is needed for effective policy application.     

Design and Management of Participatory Public Policy Making

In The Netherlands many local governments make public policy in a participatory way. Civilians and other interested parties are invited by policy makers to design public policy cooperatively. As a consequence many actors and information are embedded in the policy making process, because these actors describe the issue(s) and solutions for the policy problem differently. Some municipals are able to cope with the growing complexity of the policy process, others not. In order to deal with the growing process complexity, local governments hire independent process professionals. These process professionals design and manage the participatory policy process. However this is far from easy in practice. The process-architects and process-managers are faced with a lot of dilemmas in their process-design and process-management activities of the participatory public policy process. This article will describe some dilemmas for process-design as well as for process-management of participatory public policy making, and ways of coping with these dilemmas.