Indigenous Peoples’ Health Care: New approaches to contracting and accountability at the public administration frontier

Abstract

This article analyses reforms to contracting and accountability for indigenous primary health care organizations in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. The reforms are presented as comparative case studies, the common reform features identified and their implications analysed.

The reforms share important characteristics. Each proceeds from implicit recognition that indigenous organizations are ‘co-principals’ rather than simply agents in their relationship with government funders and regulators. There is a common tendency towards more relational forms of contracting; and tentative attempts to reconceptualize accountability. These ‘frontier’ cases have broad implications for social service contracting.     

Envy and the Islamic revival: Experimental evidence from Tunisia

I design and conduct a survey with an embedded lab-in-the-field experiment to test whether envy triggers popular support for the Islamic revival using a nationally representative sample of 600 Tunisians. Individuals exposed to high inequality may feel envious if they perceive that the success of others is granted rather than earned. Thus, envious individuals may be motivated to engage in religious and political activities to cope with their feelings. I trigger the sentiment of envy with a 2 ?×? 2 design by interacting a priming video and low stakes. I find that individuals in the envy treatment donate a larger proportion of their endowment to a politically involved religious charity, my measure of support for the Islamic revival. Overall, my experimental findings, consistent with survey data, confirm the idea that envy is an important determinant of popular support for the Islamic revival, even after controlling for religiosity.     

高职院校服务型学生社团的企业化管理改革初探

当前,高职院校服务型学生社团存在着管理落后、团队实力不强、经费管理有待提高、传统继承性弱、品牌意识薄弱、创新性不足、文化氛围薄弱等方面的问题,急需引入企业化管理方式,促进社团进一步发展。经过高职院校服务型学生社团企业化管理改革的可行性论证,两者之间具有很高的契合度,能有机融合在一起。高职院校服务型学生社团可以从精简机构设置、制度化管理、扁平化管理、科学财务管理、人力资源管理、绩效管理、内部控制、实施品牌战略、提升传承性、注重创新、注重文化氛围等共十一项具体的企业化管理手段入手,进行深入细化的企业化管理改革,将有助于高职院校服务型学生社团突破瓶颈,取得进一步发展。     

农村集体经济组织与农民专业合作社协同扶贫模式创新:重庆例证

农村集体经济组织和农民专业合作社是与农民联系较为紧密的两类经济组织,是贫困地区打赢脱贫攻坚战的重要内生性力量。但在实践中,受农村集体经济组织市场主体地位不明确、承担市场经营风险能力弱及农民专业合作社总体规模偏小、脱贫带动力不强等因素影响,两类主体的扶贫作用都未能得到充分发挥。重庆市城口县是国家扶贫开发工作重点县,在近年来的脱贫攻坚中,一方面普遍性地成立了新型农村集体经济组织,作为承接相关政府部门扶贫资源、开展村集体资产运营管理的平台;另一方面通过平等协商将村集体经济组织承接的扶贫资源以入股方式投入当地运行规范、实力较强的农民专业合作社,以获取相对稳定的分红收益,并优先用于增加贫困户收入。该模式既为村“两委”参与市场活动和承接政府扶贫资源提供了有效载体,又较好地保证了农民专业合作社等市场主体的经营自主权,有利于构建激励兼容、多方共赢的长效扶贫机制,是有镜鉴价值的扶贫模式创新。     

Policy responses to an overheated housing market: Credit tightening versus transaction taxes

Among Asian economies, Hong Kong has experienced the highest real growth in house prices since the 2010s. Two macroprudential measures, namely credit tightening (loan-to-value ratio cap) and transaction taxes (stamp duty), were introduced to cool down the overheated housing market. This study examines and compares their effectiveness based on a set of constant-quality house price indices. Through an error correction model, we find that credit tightening was able to curb house price growth in the high-price segment, while transaction taxes could not. An explanation is that the exemptions from transaction taxes for those with genuine housing needs could be abused by other market participants. It is easier for buyers to exploit the exemptions to get around the stamp duty than to manipulate the property valuation for mortgage lending. The implication is that the effectiveness of macroprudential measures hinges on whether compliance or exemption can be easily monitored and enforced.     

市场化程度对花卉产业组织影响实证分析

以刘易斯市场规模分析框架为基础,采用2008—2014年中国各省区市花卉产业的面板数据,对市场化进程与花卉产业组织的关系进行实证分析,结果表明:市场化程度对企业数量、小企业数量和小企业比例具有正向影响作用,市场化是促进花卉产业组织演化的重要因素,有利于优化花卉产业组织的规模和结构。因此,政府应该从市场组织与制度完善角度维护好市场竞争秩序,企业应该提升核心竞争力而不是简单扩大规模。     

Nonprofit organizations,institutional economics,and systems thinking

The present paper applies the logic of John Kenneth Gailbraith's institutional economics analysis of corporate power to inquiring into the societal role of the nonprofit sector. Building on Galbraith's insight that corporations cause subtle but pervasive societal imbalances, the paper locates the role of nonprofit organizations in compensating for these imbalances, thus showing corporations and nonprofit organizations to be mutually complementary rather than antagonistic actors. This argument is supported by Niklas Luhmann's vision of the precarious relationship between the complexity and sustainability of social systems as well as by Kenneth Boulding's analysis of the farmer and labor movement. Luhmann's and Boulding's perspectives show profit-seeking corporations to be social systems developing high technological complexity at the cost of sacrificing their societal sustainability, while the improvement of the latter constitutes the rationale of many nonprofit organizations. The same systems-theoretic logic suggests, however, that nonprofit organizations may tend to underestimate the technological complexity of implementing their mission-related activities, thereby undermining their own effectiveness.     

Incomplete privatization of public rental housing in Hong Kong

The delineation of the land occupied by Public Rental Housing (PRH) is a contentious issue in worldwide debates over PRH privatization. Heated arguments hold that governments should retain the occupied land for mitigating inequalities that privatization might provoke. Dual-role policies arise concerning both efficiency and equality. This research seeks to decode actual consequences of such policies based on their implementation in Hong Kong, with a specific focus on the Tenants Purchase Scheme (TPS). Intended to enliven PRH within needy families, the TPS policy instead resulted in dormant resale of privatized PRH with adverse effects on target groups. Hypotheses on how the TPS policy has affected housing resale are developed based on property rights and searching theories and tested against empirical data. This research offers a theoretical basis for exploring solutions to the unanticipated aftermath of Hong Kong’s PRH privatization and provides information for other governments on implications of privatization strategies.     

以德报怨策略与企业机会主义行为:基于高新技术企业的研究

基于自我执行协议理论及交易属性,集中探讨企业采取以德报怨策略应对合作者剥削行为的驱动因素以及企业以德报怨策略如何影响合作者机会主义行为。通过对173个中国高新技术企业买方数据问卷调查,采用PLS对假设进行检验。结果显示,交易属性中的交易可观察性是以德报怨策略的前因变量,并且受交易复杂性的影响。同时,以德报怨策略能够减少交易双方的机会主义行为。