‘My Own Utopia’. The economics of Bentham's Panopticon

The paper analyses Bentham's theory of the economic management of the Panopticon prison he projected in 1786 and which was approved by the British Parliament in 1794, but never constructed. Its focus is on the economic arguments employed to justify the principles of management, most of which amount to the modern economic notions of market policies and principal-agent relationships. Bentham's way of conceiving these notions can be summarized in the problem of the junction of interest and duty. This paper shows that many modern notions concerning the economics of organizations and public economics are clearly foreshadowed, and sometimes even explicitly formulated, in Bentham's writings on prison management. Bentham was conscious of the important economic dimension of the Panopticon scheme and was persuaded, albeit illusorily, that an accurate economic theory of its management could favour its approval. Well before Charles Babbage's On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (), he went into a detailed theoretical analysis of the requirements and dilemmas of a complex economic organization oriented towards the joint fulfilment of the goals of a variety of stakeholders: taxpayers, the government, contract managers, keepers, taskmasters, subcontractors and prisoners. He also recognized that some institutional limits must be opposed to profit-oriented management in order to preserve the life, health and mental equilibrium of subordinates.     

Information,Pricing and Efficiency in Cash and Futures Markets: The Case of Hogs

The price leadership roles among hog cash and futures markets are assessed to locate points of price discovery and to examine flows of information among these markets. Several years of data are analyzed using lead/lag causality analysis and strength of linear causality measures. Although significant instantaneous relationships exist among hog cash and futures markets, one-way causality tests indicate that generally the futures market dominates cash hog markets in the price discovery process.     

Earnings and Percentage Female: A Longitudinal Study

Comparable worth advocates assume that the relation between earnings and percentage female in an occupation is due to crowding or other forms of discrimination. An alternative explanation is that the relation stems from women freely choosing different occupations. Using longitudinal data to control for time-invariant omitted variables, as well as cross-sectional data (for comparison with previous research), we find that although men's estimated penalty is not reduced, the percentage female penalty falls substantially for women and is not statistically significant. These results imply that estimates of the percentage female effect based on cross-sectional data may be inflated for women–except for those with intermittent labor force participation. This group does experience a sizeable penalty for working in female-dominated occupations. Hence, a comparable worth policy would most likely benefit women with discontinuous employment.     

Ethnic Minorities and Integration Process in France and the Netherlands: An Institutionalist Perspective

This article examines the ethnic minorities integration policies as implemented in France and the Netherlands. This study will be based on an institutionalist approach relying on North's analytical framework in order to explain the recent changes in these policies. I emphasize the existence of four patterns of social integration: reciprocity, redistribution, exchange, and coercion. I will also be insisting on the importance of ideology and the way it has evolved over time. This theoretical framework is then used to “tell the story” of the two countries. While France's historical and ideological backgrounds have forced it to adopt a universalist view and fight against communautarisme, the Dutch position was quite different as it does not deny the ethnic minorities cultural and religious freedom. Nevertheless, there is a hardening of the dominant ideology taking place in France. As to the Netherlands, there is a noticeable shift in the government's attitude toward ethnic minorities.     

Return Dynamics of Japanese Stock Index Options

This paper addresses the return dynamics of stock index options. Distributional moments are suggestive of a skewness preference hypothesis that provides an economic rationale for investors' interest in options. There is no evidence of detectable intermarket arbitrage opportunities from cross- sectional tests of volatility ratio and implied elasticity. Joint tests of market efficiency and parity dynamics suggest that the longer the remaining life of at-the-money options, the higher the likelihood of parity deviations being absorbed in response to percentage index changes. There are also indications of maturing Japanese options markets from rational expectations and parity regression tests.