This is an article written in honor of Professor Donald Schwartz, a leading figure in academic corporate law for over two decades, but also a man nearly unique in his willingness to move beyond corporate law to the general study of corporate behavior. In this light, this article will not explore the latest wrinkle in the law – the most recent case, latest SEC ruling, or newest takeover defense tactic – but will instead ask if there are new ways in which we should try to talk about corporate law and corporate behavior. These were questions that Don Schwartz repeatedly asked himself and others, and this article is a modest attempt to respond by suggesting a different framework within which we can better understand institutional bargaining inside the corporation. Let me begin by describing the prevailing orthodoxy. Scholars of both law and economics have tended to view corporate governance as largely a principal/agent relationship. Under this view, shareholders are the principals; management, the agents. While standard economic theory today describes the corporation as a "series of bargains" or "nexus of contracts" in which additional interest groups – creditors, employees, suppliers, etc. – also participate, it still assumes that these other actors will not seek to participate in governance decisions. Under the neoclassical view, efficiency dictates that only the firm's residual claimants – its shareholders – should have voting rights. As a result, corporate governance (although not the broader topic of corporate contracting) essentially boils down to the principal/agent relationship between shareholders and managers. So viewed, the law's role becomes that of reducing the "agency costs" that shareholders must incur to hold management faithful to their interests. The thesis of this article is that this bilateral model of corporate governance oversimplifies, basically because it leaves out an essential third player: stakeholders. Although stakeholders have not in the past sought to participate in corporate governance, this pattern is changing – only recently, to be sure, but very rapidly in some sectors of the economy. In some cases, the motor force driving this change may be the failure of an earlier system of implicit contracting; in other cases, it may be an exogenous change (such as the development of junk bonds) that revealed the inadequacy of existing contractual protections and left stakeholders exposed to new risks. In response, new contractual protections have been designed to protect some stakeholders, but other stakeholders have sought instead to participate in governance decisions. The key transition, however, is the formation of coalitions – sometimes between management and stakeholders to resist shareholder pressures and sometimes between stakeholders and shareholders to oust management. The central concern of this article will be where this transition is leading. Arguably, the public corporation should be viewed less as a "series of bargains" than as a "series of coalitions." Compared to bargains, coalitions are less stable, less enforceable, and less predictable. While the "nexus of contracts" paradigm conveys, at least rhetorically, the view that the relationships among those interacting within the corporation are fixed and enforceable, the reality may be that these relationships are more fluid and transitional, with outcomes determined less on the basis of legal rights than through coalition politics.
Efficient operations of state enterprises play a significant role in promoting development and growth of the national economy, and accordingly require implementing the most efficient model of governance. Given the state-seaport relation, current common concepts of port operations and their factors include features of Keynesian economic theory. Moreover, features of monetarism and institutionalism may be observed in the performance of seaports. The contrast between the assessment of seaport performance based on classical public administration and economic theories and the performance of the global maritime sector in modern market conditions raises the scientific problem of the research: Which methodology should be applied for comprehensive evaluation of added-value, created through the effective governance at the state seaport. The object of the research is the seaport governance. The aim of the research is to substantiate value oriented management changes of state seaport. The methods of the research include the following: systematic review, meta-analysis, analysis of scientific literature, logography, statistical analysis, interpretation, and generalization.Effective management consists of the following three managerial levels: operational management, strategical management, and governance. Each of latter management levels has different functional objectives and their consistent implementation creates the expected outcomes of effective management. The activities of state-owned companies are primarily based on their specific operational indicators, which create added value to the whole national economy. In order to achieve the highest possible added value, different management situations have to be modelled for the best solution to be found. According to the theory of public administration, especially related to the decentralization of state-owned enterprises, it is necessary to compare the indicators of financial efficiency and performance with the social and economic impact of the state-owned enterprises operating in the competitive market and region. The decentralization processes which occur due to the implementation of financial and institutional autonomy were implemented during the development of the new public management paradigm. At the end of the last century, many public management reforms were implemented in the area of infrastructure, transport and telecommunication management following the increase of the financial and institutional autonomy of state-owned enterprises. Such reforms were influenced by the shift of bureaucratic governance into corporate governance and following an increase of competitiveness in the market.Determining the effectiveness of seaport governance may indicate the level of complexity and linkages between the actors operating in the seaport and whole maritime transport sector. Moreover, the effectiveness of state-owned seaports may be evaluated and compared to other governance models by assessing the added value of activity and national socio-economic indicators. Economic theories provide a large variety of methodological approaches in defining and assessing performance. This responds to the tendency of the development of economic thought, related to the key differences between current economic schools and economic theory (postmodernist, free market, neoclassical, endogenous growth, etc.). It also promotes the need for forming a new research methodology, corresponding to modern economic development and operating environment, in order to reach a greater production and exchange efficiency, and social welfare maximization.In the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, the ports of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania compete with the ports of the Russian Federation. Comparing the main port activity indicator, the volume of cargo handling, the apparent trend of turnover of Lithuanian ports – cargo handling rate is lower than of the ports of the Russian Federation and is the largest in the Baltic states market. Based on the analysis of the results of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian ports, it can be argued that the positive and consistent improvement of the performance of the strategic object of the country, the state seaport, is a significant but insufficient indicator describing the country's social, economic and environmental situation. This confirms the theoretical statements that good macroeconomic indicators of various sectors of the state economy are not a precise unit of measurement of the current situation, do not adequately describe the actual economic situation of the country and do not meet the expectations of the population. In order to reflect the real socio-economic situation, it is necessary to follow the systematic conception of quality of life, which interprets the quality of life of the population as an integrated concept that fully describes the ecological, economic, material and moral health of society, measured at the macro level (national scale) and micro level (from the point of view of an individual). ; Vadovaujantis vadybos ir ekonomikos teorijomis grindžiamas į vertės kūrimą orientuoto valstybinio jūrų uosto valdymo poreikis, išskiriami pagrindiniai teoriniai efektyvaus valdymo elementai, atsižvelgiant į valstybinio jūrų uostų veiklos tyrimo kompleksiškumo pobūdį, formuojama veiklos vertinimo metodika, integruojanti pridėtinės vertės, mikro- ir makroekonominius, gyvenimo kokybės rodiklius. Teorinės prielaidos pagrindžiamos Estijos, Latvijos ir Lietuvos valstybinių jūrų uostų veiklos, šių valstybių gyvenimo kokybės analizės rezultatais.
Рассмотрена эволюция теории и практики государственного регулирования рынков аддиктивных товаров и услуг в контексте с периодизацией представлений о роли государства в экономике в целом, историко-экономической эпохой, формированием видовых рынков. В эпоху меркантилизма сфера регулирования рынков аддиктивных благ не являлась предметом внимания экономистов, но на практике сформировано представление о необходимости государственного протекционизма. В период его критики в рамках теории физиократов и начала классической школы алкогольная продукция становится предметом исследования экономистов, как важнейший источник бюджетных средств. Отмена крепостного права, развитие частной промышленной деятельности, замена откупной системы акцизным налогообложением свидетельствуют о проникновении традиционных либеральных принципов в отечественную экономику и в сферу аддиктивных благ. Немецкие исторические школы, ориентированные на активную роль государства с учетом национальных особенностей экономики, нашли поддержку и развитие в работах российских ученых, поддерживающих винную и табачную монополию. В советский период в основу тотальной национализации производства и сбыта разрешенных аддиктивных благ положены принципы марксистской политической экономии. Для маржинальной школы характерно психологическое толкование экономических процессов в сфере аддиктивных благ в условиях совершенной конкуренции, в частности роли потребителей в ценообразовании. В период теоретической борьбы монетаризма и кейнсианства, совпавшего с наркотическим бумом, возникли направления экономики преступлений и наказаний, наркотиков. Во время неолиберализма в сфере аддиктивных благ сформировалось антипрогибиционистское движение. Смена неоинституциональной экономической теорией ряда постулатов неоклассической экономики способствовала развитию эмпирических и теоретических исследований аддиктивного потребительского поведения, новой интерпретации роли государственных структур на основных рынках аддиктивных благ. Обоснована целесообразность привлечения неоинституциональной теории в качестве концептуальной базы их регулирования, основанной на расчете и сравнении социально-экономического результата реализации существующих альтернатив политики. Предложено исследование экономики наркотиков, алкогольной и спиртосодержащей продукции, табачных изделий, азартных игр и других товаров и услуг с аналогичными стереотипами потребления объединить в экономику аддиктивных благ. Установлено, что проведенные исследования эволюции экономических концепций государственного регулирования рынков аддиктивных благ и мер их практической реализации в XV-XXI вв. обладают большим креативным потенциалом для осмысления сути и особенностей их государственного регулирования в современной России в институциональном и эволюционном смысле. ; The article discusses the evolution of state regulation of the market of addictive goods and services in the context of the periodization of ideas about the role of the state in the economy in general, in historical and economic era, in the formation of the species of addictive goods markets. In the age of mercantilism the sphere of regulation of addictive goods markets was not the subject of attention of economists, but in practice there is an idea of the need for state protectionism. During its criticism in the framework of the theory of physiocrats and in the beginning of the classical school, alcohol products become a subject of research of economists, as the major source of budgetary funds. The abolition of serfdom, the development of private industrial activity, changing the farming tax system to the excise tax, indicate the penetration of traditional liberal principles in domestic economy in the field of addictive goods. The German historical schools focused on the active role of the state with respect to national peculiarities of the economy, found support and development in the works of Russian scientists that support the alcohol and tobacco monopoly. In the Soviet period the principles of Marxist political economy were formed on the basis of total nationalization of production and distribution of allowed addictive goods. The margin school is characterized by psychological interpretation of economic processes in the field of addictive goods under the conditions of perfect competition, in particular the role of consumers in the pricing. In the period of theoretical struggle of monetarism against keynesianism, which coincided with the drug boom, there were areas of economics of crime and punishment, drugs. In the neoliberalism period the antiprohibitionist movement was formed in the field of addictive goods. Changing some postulates of neoclassical economics by neo-institutional economic theory contributed to the development of empirical and theoretical studies of addictive consumer behavior, a new interpretation of the role of state structures in the main markets of addictive goods. The author justified the feasibility of attracting neo-institutional theory as a framework for their regulation, based on the calculation and comparison of the socio-economic result of implementation of the existing policy alternatives. It is proposed to combine the study on economics of drugs, alcohol products, tobacco products, gambling and other goods and services with similar consumption patterns into the economy of addictive goods. It is established that studies of evolution of the economic concepts of government regulation of addictive goods markets, and measures for their practical implementation in the 15th-21st centuries have great creative potential for understanding the essence and peculiarities of state regulation in modern Russia in institutional and evolutionary sense.
1-. International relations (IR) theory has suffered a restructuring among several lines over the past two decades. The gradual but uninterrupted decline of systemic theories - primus inter pares in the discipline since the 1970s- is one of those. (1) This decline was accompanied by a rise of those approaches that privilege domestic politics as the place to look for answers. For reasons I will develop below, such an intellectual step was logical, expected, and partially appropriate. (2) While the current state of affairs should not be seen as immutable and a systemic comeback is plausible, the truth is that domestic politics, and non-systemic approaches in general, are well entrenched in a semi-hegemonic position. In this essay I will explain the reasons behind the aforementioned shift, assess its consequences, and advance some hypotheses on the future of systemic theories of IR.2-. Born between the interwar period and the dawn the Cold War world, IR was created with the explicit objective of explaining the causes of war –particularly great wars, understood under the lenses of the two devastating conflicts of the first half of the 20th century. Since then, IR scholars have struggled to respond to the main challenges –or what they perceive as the main challenges- in world politics. (3) This "duty" to explain the world drives theory to follow the patterns of change in international politics, which, as they develop, suggest new problématiques and novel ways to approach them. In important ways then –although, as discussed later, this is not the whole picture- (4) a sociology of inquiry is needed to better understand some of the key transformations in IR theory -e.g. the shift from systemic to domestic theories. Systemic approaches (5) made their meteoric rise under the shelter of K. Waltz's Neorealism. (6) They were created as a tool for a particular time with particular problems. (7) This was a world in which the primary preoccupation was how to manage the bilateral relationship between the United States and the USSR so that it would not en up in World War III. There were certainly other interests in the discipline, but this one outweighed all the rest. A Cold War context made systemic theories very appropriate. Needless to say, the bipolar conflict had been in place a long time before Waltz's path-breaking Theory of International Politics. (8) The essential point is, however, that Neorealism proved to be very successful in explaining the basic patterns of interest in this particular period of the history of IR –i.e. dynamics of polarity, relevance of nuclear weapons, consequences of anarchy and its relationship with war and cooperation, inter alia- in a more parsimonious and convincing way than the discipline had ever been able to do.The IR community recognized this "Copernican turn", as Waltz defined it, as progress and systemic approaches were established as mainstream, maybe even as "normal science." Anyone trying to explain something in international politics had to reckon with the system. This was true for realists (see the work of Gilpin, Walt, and Grieco) but also for scholars with a line of inquiry that differed substantially from Waltz's (see Keohane's Cooperation after Hegemony for a good example). 3-. A dramatic event that shakes the bases of an academic discipline is sometimes needed to motivate scholars to devise new lines of inquiry and surpass research programs that appear to be losing heuristic power. This is what the fall of the Soviet Union did with Neorealism, and systemic approaches in general. (9) Structural realism was in many ways, and problematically so, a theory for the Cold War. Its discussion on nuclear weapons, bipolarity, uncertainty, and superpower dynamics seemed to be too tied to a specific historical context. (10) The inability of neorealism, or any other systemic theory for that matter, to foresee –or even explain- the disappearance of the bipolar world –a systemic change par excellence-supposed a hard blow to its appeal. (11) Both the fall of the USSR and the subsequent appearance (or uncovering, once the Cold War veil was lifted) of new "themes" in international politics -IPE, civil wars, the role of leaders, the democratic peace, inter alia- opened a fertile camp over which to argue for the need to "go beyond systemic theory." (12) I argued supra that this was an appropriate move (or partially appropriate). But the reasons implicitly inferred up to know -failure in predicting events and a crisis in the IR community (in a Kuhnian sense)- cannot support this claim. The other face of the coin is that the thorough self-examination of the 1990s also responded to internal problems of systemic theories as research programs. For example, in the 1980s the discipline was stuck in the mud of absolute vs. relative gains debate, a degenerative discussion from a Lakatosian perspective. (13) Visible problems of heuristic power were calling for a partial move beyond the system. This was the real cause for the shift, and the best argument to characterize it as "appropriate". The exogenous shock (fall of the USSR) had the role, not at all minor, of opening a window of opportunity for dissenting scholars. Helen Milner was one of the most eloquent advocates for this turn. Her argument, in short, was that "systemic theory simply cannot take us far enough" (Milner, 1992). The assumption that anarchy was the principal variable defining states preferences and the primacy of a straight causal line from the system to the state and then to policy-making was excessively simplistic, Milner argued. How could the discipline solve this quagmire? By studying domestic politics to understand states' preferences and, consequently, the differing patterns of conflict and cooperation in international politics. (14) As Milner contended: "…cooperation may be unattainable because of domestic intransigence, and not because of the international system." (15) A reaction against systemic theories was not exclusive to the liberal trenches. Following this turn toward domestic politics, some realist scholars directed their efforts at the incorporation of domestic variables as a way to add complexity to systemic models that they saw as too crude. In his From Wealth to Power, F. Zakaria argued that anarchy and the distribution of power were not enough to explain the behavior of rising powers. After observing that at the end of the 19th century the US was not as assertive as a structural approach would have predicted, he hypothesized that this was because it did not have the governmental capacity to do so. To solve this puzzle he argued for the incorporation of models of resource extraction and governmental capability to try to get through the Neorealist corset. This was an important intra-realist challenge to a somewhat ossified systemic realism. (16)The rise of domestic approaches represented a generalized discontentment with the excessive importance given to parsimony and the inflexibility that came with it. Parsimony, which should be no more than a tool in theory building, was placed as a goal in itself, restricting research in a way that went against the discipline's own progress. Those boundaries had to be overcome if we wanted to say something about some of the important issues left unstudied by a focus on the system. Once again, the Cold War world with its apparently clear strategic problems may have seemed more propitious to a highly parsimonious approach to theory building. In a post Cold War world, the costs of parsimony were too heavy. Domestic theories certainly lost in parsimony, but they gained in a more real approach to IR problématiques. This was the primary rationale behind the turn here discussed, and in this limited sense, the shift was appropriate. (17)4-. It would be nice to unambiguously assert that the fall of systemic theories made IR a coherent and progressive discipline. This, unfortunately, is not the case. The past two decades have seen the formation of a different ethos of theory building and discipline development that may end up doing more harm than good to our broader understanding of international politics. Something not mentioned up to now is the ascent of quantitative and strategic-choice approaches in the discipline. Quantitative approaches gained prominence by the same time that, and related to, domestic theories were supplanting systemic theories. (18) Strategic choice and game theory, following developments in other academic areas -especially economics-, also gained importance in the 1990s under the idea of formalizing theories and going beyond the "isms." There is nothing wrong with these approaches per se. Quantitative work has been very important in the empirical development of IR -maybe too neglected in the past. Formal theory, on the other hand, is a powerful and clear tool to build and evaluate theories while avoiding problems of underspecification all too common in the discipline –though, this is only true if one can get through its assumptions. (19)The problems of this new "methodological bets" are to be found in the costs for the general development of the discipline. The most pressing are the ones related to the idea that theory construction should be a bottom to top affair, and the implicit notion that by building the parts individually we will eventually end up in a progressive accumulation of theoretical knowledge. However, this epistemological decision may well result in the proliferation of particularistic theories of problems ever more sophisticatedly studied, increasingly particular and micro, and in crescendo uninteresting. (20) By depending on a kind of magical automatic accumulation of theoretical knowledge we are risking to end up with an even more chaotic and incoherent discipline (more on this in the conclusion). 5-. As said in the introduction, the fall of grace of systemic theories cannot be taken as an irreversible given; it is possible to devise some scenarios in which systemic approaches could make a comeback.The first one is linked to the relationship between theory and History discussed earlier. The post Cold War world, particularly the 1990s, was a strange period for the discipline. The study of IR has historically dealt with great power politics as its core. The "curious" 1990s came with a certain absence of great power politics, especially due to the overwhelming power position of the US. This goes a long way in explaining the growing emphasis on domestic politics, civil wars, international organizations, inter alia, during those years. A partial return of classical great power politics (or the perception of it) -for example under the banner of the rise of China and some other middle powers- might motivate a recasting of systemic theories -particularly for those wanting to study polarity (a passé topic in the unipolar 1990s), (21) systemic change and its consequences, etc. (22)Another plausible scenario would be the success of some of the ongoing projects to make systemic theories more sophisticated and comprehensive by, for example, incorporating domestic variables. A good example is "Neo-classical Realism" (see fn. 16). This research project proceeds from a systemic assumption of the influences of the system (that is, a neorealist basis) but incorporates domestic politics as an intervening variable between systemic pressures and decision-making. Though a rather interesting proto-school, Neoclassical Realism is still in its infant stages and has yet to produce work of remarkable characteristics. Lastly, domestic politics, as should have been expected, were not the panacea for the development of IR theory. There might well be a social exhaustion with the results of domestic and micro-theory –a Kuhnian crisis analogous to the one that discredited systemic theories. This may eventually take IR on unexpected paths. Nevertheless, if measured by academic output and Geist, predicting a comeback of systemic approaches seems a risky bet. The discipline appears to be quite comfortable with increasing its empirical production, formalizing theories towards an Icarian "scientism", and avoiding, at its own peril, a "wholist" view of international politics. 6-. Going beyond systemic theories –not in the sense of vanishing them, but of relaxing some of their strictures, increasing their sophistication, and trying new approaches- was the necessary thing to do for a methodology that was unable to cope with many of the relevant problems in IR. The turn to domestic and particularistic perspectives brought much needed renovation, indeed. However, the excesses incurred by systemic theorists as a result of an obsession with parsimony and structural effects may now seem analogous (although for the opposite reasons) to a fixation with the particular and micro-level studies in contemporary IR theory. A blind push to obtain ever more data of increasingly micro phenomena puts at risk what we can say about international relations in general. We may, for example, be more much prepared to sophisticatedly answer why a specific insurgent group responded in a specific way to the level of aggression of a specific state, (23) but we may also be losing our interest and capacity to think about the nature of conflict in its most elemental condition. The stakes are too high for the IR community to avoid an honest discussion on how far we are willing to continue on this path. (1) This essay works with the assumption of a relative decline of systemic apporaches. To argue that they have vanished would be utterly incorrect. For a convincing argument on the inevitability of structural constraints see Jervis'sSystem Effects.(2) Although a change may be welcomed, the results are not always as encouraging as expected (more on this qualification of "appropriate" later).(3) This does not mean, of course, that there is an exclusive focus on policy or immediacy, It means that in its most basic essence, the idea of the discipline is to be able to provide some answers to the pressing problems in the international system. To give an example, few people would be interested in studying the prospects of war between France and Germany in the 21st century per se –though it surely is studied as a historical case that can shed light on other issues-, while this was one of the main topics in the nascent IR discipline.(4) Social science does not progress only by exogenous shocks, but also for endogenous reasons that cannot be explained by what happens outside theoretical disscusions.(5) Understood simply as those that privilege the influence of the structure over the behavior of the units.(6) This type of theories certainly were not born with Waltz; systemic is a much broader category than Neorealism. The important point is that Waltz devised the more convincing type of systemic theory. For simplicity, Waltz' Neorelism will be used here as the epitome and a kind of proxy for systemic theory. (7) It must be said that the rise of systemic theories also responded to changes in the social sciences in general; for example, the influence of structuralist anthorpoligist Levi-Strauss' work, which Waltz knew well.(8) Theories of IR before Waltz hosted a diverse group of analysts: Classical realism from the hand of a Hans Morgenthau, Geroge Kennan and Raymond Aron; liberal approaches from a Stanley Hoffman, Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye; Bureacratic Organization and foreign policy from a Graham Allison; and a long et cetera.(9) See R. N. Lebow, "The Long Peace, the End of the Cold War and the Failure of Realism."(10) See I. Oren's Our Enemies and US: America´s Rivalries and the Making of Political Science.(11) As with its rise the decline of systemic theories was also linked to broader transformations in the world of ideas, to which IR seems to always be a latecomer. From a broad perspective, this phenomenon had started in the 1960s with the work of Foucault, Derrida, Geertz and others.(12) The end of the immediate preoccupation with bipolarity also gave the opportunity to rethink some long-term historical problems of Neorealism (see Schroeder 1994).(13) Some of the scholars engaged in this deabate were: Keohane, Grieco, Axelrod, and Mastanduno; cf. Milner (1992).(14) In another article in International Organization (1987) she argues that to understand the way in which states make decisions in the international economy it is not enough to look at anarchy. Her model studies the type of economic links between countries (high or low interdependence) and the influence of interests groups that may pressure the state to make particular decisions; these policy outcomes would have been incomprehensible from a systemic/anarchic stance. According to Milner, there is an important dynamic of preference construction and strategies adopted that are to be found in domestic politics.(15) See also Putnam (1988) for an interesting effort to move beyond lists of domestic factors and towards a coherent two level theory.(16) This line of research has been given the title of Neoclassical Realism (see G. Rose 1998). See the work of R. Schweller, J. Taliaferro, A. Friedberg, and T. Christensen.(17) Systemic theories were also attached to what has been discussed as the "paradigm wars" between realism, liberalism, constructivism, etc. The turn away from them can also be given credit for helping to discredit this unproductive way of theorizing.(18) This trend was tied to the notoriety of the "democratic peace" project that was, and still is, an empirical enterprise at its core. See Russett and Oneal (1999); cf. Gartzke (2007).(19) See Wagner, War and the State, and Lake and Powell Strategic Choice and International Relations.(20) This is not the nature of all the work in this approach, of course, but just a possible trend of the school as a whole. See Walt's "Rigor or Rigor Mortis" for a sharp, but not always convincing, critique.(21) For an exception see the work by N. Monteiro on unipolarity. This does not mean that polarity disappeared from the IR map, but it was certainly shrinked as a research question.(22) Some young scholars on this line of research are: P. MacDonald, J. Parent, D. Kliman and M. Beckley.(23) See Jason Lyall's "Does Indiscriminate Violence Incite Insurgent Attacks? Evidence from Chechnya" To be fair, Lyall's work attempts to generalize from this specific case –how convincing he is not very clear, however. *Ph.D. StudentDepartment of Political ScienceUniversity of Pennsylvania.E-mail: gcastro@sas.upenn.edu
[eng] The accelerated impact of human activities is causing increasing damages to the Earth's life support systems. Consequently, the policy-making and scientific communities have advocated the urgent need for a change towards the sustainable use of natural resources and ecosystems. This thesis deals with the institutional conditions necessary for that change in coupled social-ecological systems, through an in-depth case study: the Doñana region, an estuarine social-ecological system affected by intricate water resources and wetland conservation problems located in the Guadalquivir Estuary (south-west Spain). In particular, I focus on the need for transitions from command-andcontrol schemes towards more flexible, participatory and adaptive approaches to policy and decision making: specifically, adaptive governance and adaptive management. For this purpose, I address three interrelated questions of broad research interest, using a theoretical framework that combines elements from resilience and institutional path dependence theories. The first question has implications for the implementation of participatory processes in the course of transitional designs towards adaptive governance and management, while the other two have implications at a theoreticanalytical level. The first research question focuses on assessing the usefulness of an action-research program aimed at introducing adaptive management tenets at the research-management interface of the Doñana region (Chapter 4). The program, which paralleled an adaptive restoration in the context of the hydro-ecological restoration project Doñana 2005, combined a formalised process of networking, interviews, focus groups and System Dynamics techniques that proved useful to engage and build trust among a wide range of actors who finally participated in two adaptive management workshops. The participation of stakeholders and agencies entrenched in long-standing conflicts and power struggles up to that date was considered a major success of the program. During the workshops, the participants collaboratively developed a set of policy recommendations, offering potential avenues to improve the research-management interface, water resources management and wetland conservation practices in the Doñana region and Guadalquivir Estuary. The action-research program was supported by preparatory research aimed at analysing the practices of, and learning from, best-in-class practitioners on adaptive management from British Columbia (Canada), where this approach was first conceived and implemented on a large scale (Chapter 3). Such preparatory research, which was based on a document review, interviews and a final workshop at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), revealed that adaptive management has cycled, during the last four decades, through alternate phases of theoretical development, practical implementation and feedback, to which many scholars and practitioners have contributed. In particular, the workshop allowed current opportunities and constraints for the testing and implementation of adaptive management in Canada to be elicited, based on the direct, on-the-ground experience of practitioners and analysts. The results of that research provided the grounds and support for the strategic development of the action-research program in the Doñana region. The preliminary identification, during the action-research program, of major rigidities within Doñana's institutional framework and management agencies triggered the second part of the thesis, which addressed, through institutional analysis, the two additional research questions mentioned above. The second research question of the thesis focuses on enhancing the understanding of the roots of institutional rigidity in maladaptive social-ecological systems. Institutional rigidity that hinders change and smothers innovation represents a major constraint for adaptive governance and adaptive management. Therefore, to facilitate potential transitions towards more sustainable social-ecological systems characterised by adaptive approaches to decision-making, it is of utmost importance to understand and explain the origins of such institutional rigidity. In Chapter 5, by constructing a historical pattern, I identify the existence of a rigid institutional regime for water resources management and wetland conservation in the Doñana region, and explain, through a first theoretical iteration, the mechanisms underlying the genesis, amplification and persistence of such institutional rigidity. My explanation has two distinguishable parts: on one side, the deep-historical genesis of the regime at a critical juncture in the 19th century; and on the other side, the formation and continuity of the regime up to the last decades of the 20th century, despite its dysfunctionality for coping with crises and its inability to harmonise wetland conservation, water management and economic development. The historical pattern confirms that the Doñana's regime has followed a path-dependent dynamic, largely characterised by the historical recurrence on the application of command-andcontrol schemes. In a seeming paradox, these schemes, instead of driving the regime towards an efficient outcome, led to the formation of a rigid institutional regime that drove the Doñana region into a sub-optimal systemic rigidity trap. This rigid outcome may be theoretically qualified as contingent, for it defies the traditional expectations of neoclassical economics that lie at the logical core of the concept of institutional path dependence. The third research question of the thesis focuses on the explanatory potential of entrepreneurship and discourses, in their relationship with political-economic interests and power, as factors contributing to shape outcomes in local social-ecological systems. In particular, I discussed the explanatory potential of those factors, when the core logic of path dependence (composed by the mainstream principles of neoclassical economics) fails to predict observed outcomes in historical, evolutionary perspective, and qualifies such outcomes as contingent. In Chapter 6, I undertake a second theoretical iteration that re-examines the historical explanatory pattern developed in Chapter 5, in order to show how the Doñana's rigid outcome can be understood as more predictable. In particular, I argue that three mechanisms constituted necessary and sufficient conditions for the transformational process that led to the Doñana's rigid outcome: (1) a contextual political-discursive mechanism that mobilised power top-down and signalled increasing returns to actors downstream of the institutional regime; (2) the operation of increasing returns and self-reinforcing mechanisms bottom-up; (3) an endogenous entrepreneurial component that acted as a mechanism for action in an environment of extreme uncertainty. In the general discussion of the thesis (Chapter 7), I make the case for systematising the role of discourses and entrepreneurship factors, in their relationship with politicaleconomic interests and power, into the analysis. I argue that such systematisation contributes significantly to diminishing the degree of contingency associated to the Doñana's rigid outcome. More generally, my discussion deals with contingency as a property of the path dependence concept that can be modulated in explanations of institutional dynamics. This type of advancements could inform future policy and institutional designs for successful transitions towards adaptive governance and management in social-ecological systems, hence improving the prospects for the sustainable use of natural resources and ecosystems. Enriching the knowledge gathered during the action-research program with the in-depth analysis of institutional constraints rooted in historical factors, allowed a number of potential avenues to be identified that may aid the transition towards adaptive governance and management in the Doñana region (Chapter 9). It also allowed an informed speculation to be made about the potential role of action-research programs such as the one described in this thesis, to comply with (and complement) the requisites for public participation and social learning of European Union legislation: notably, the Water Framework Directive (Chapter 7, Section 7.4). ; [spa] El impacto acelerado de las actividades humanas está causando el aumento de los daños a los sistemas de soporte vital de la Tierra. En consecuencia, gestores y científicos gestores han defendido la necesidad urgente de un cambio hacia el uso sostenible de los recursos naturales y los ecosistemas. Esta tesis trata sobre las condiciones institucionales necesarias para dicho cambio en sistemas socio-ecológicos, a través de un estudio de caso en profundidad: la región de Doñana, un sistema socio-ecológico afectado por problemas complejos en términos de recursos hídricos y conservación de humedales, situado en el Estuario del Guadalquivir (suroeste de España). En particular, en esta tesis me centro en la necesidad de transiciones desde estrategias de mando y control hacia enfoques más flexibles, participativos y adaptativos para la elaboración de políticas y la toma de decisiones: específicamente, gobernanza adaptativa y gestión adaptativa. Para ello, abordo tres preguntas de interés de investigación, amplias e interrelacionadas, utilizando un marco teórico que combina elementos de las teorías de dependencia de la trayectoria institucional y la resiliencia. La primera pregunta tiene implicaciones para la implementación de procesos de participación en el curso del diseño de transiciones hacia la gobernanza y la gestión adaptativas, mientras que las otras dos tienen implicaciones a nivel teórico-analítico. La primera pregunta de investigación se centra en la evaluación de la utilidad de un programa de investigación-acción cuyo objetivo fue introducir principios de gestión adaptativa en la interfaz investigación-gestión de la región de Doñana (Capítulo 4). El programa, que se desarrolló paralelamente a una restauración adaptativa en el contexto del proyecto de restauración hidro-ecológica Doñana 2005, combina un proceso formalizado de networking, entrevistas, grupos focales y técnicas de Dinámica de Sistemas, que demostró ser útil para fomentar la confianza entre un amplio rango de actores que finalmente participaron en dos talleres de gestión adaptativa. La participación de partes interesadas y organismos que se habían visto anteriormente envueltos en situaciones conflictivas y disputas de poder fue considerada un gran éxito del programa. Durante los talleres, los participantes desarrollaron en colaboración una serie de recomendaciones de política, ofreciendo posibles vías para mejorar la interfaz investigación-gestión, la gestión de los recursos hídricos y la conservación de humedales en la región de Doñana y el Estuario del Guadalquivir. El programa de investigación-acción fue apoyado por una investigación preparatoria dirigida a analizar y aprender de las prácticas de profesionales líderes en gestión adaptativa de la Columbia Británica (Canadá), donde este enfoque fue concebido e implementado por primera vez a gran escala (Capítulo 3). Dicha investigación preparatoria se basó en una revisión documental, entrevistas y un taller final en la Universidad de la Columbia Británica (Vancouver), y reveló que la gestión adaptativa ha completado varias fases alternas de desarrollo teórico, aplicación práctica y retroalimentación durante las últimas cuatro décadas, a las que muchos académicos y profesionales han contribuido. En particular, el taller permitió extraer lecciones sobre oportunidades y limitaciones actuales para la implementación y evaluación de la gestión adaptativa en Canadá, basadas en la experiencia directa de profesionales y analistas sobre el terreno. Los resultados de esa investigación sirvieron de base y apoyo para el desarrollo estratégico del programa de investigación-acción en la región de Doñana. La identificación preliminar de importantes rigideces en el marco institucional y las agencias de gestión de Doñana durante el programa de investigación-acción, motivó la segunda parte de la tesis, la cual abordó las dos preguntas de investigación adicionales mencionadas anteriormente, mediante análisis institucional. La segunda pregunta de investigación de la tesis se centra en mejorar la comprensión de las raíces de la rigidez institucional en sistemas socio-ecológicos maladaptativos. La rigidez institucional representa un obstáculo importante para la gobernanza y gestión adaptativas, ya que impide el cambio y dificulta la innovación. Por lo tanto, para facilitar potenciales transiciones hacia sistemas socio-ecológicos más sostenibles caracterizados por enfoques adaptativos para la toma de decisiones, es de suma importancia entender y explicar los orígenes de la rigidez institucional. En el Capítulo 5, a través de la construcción de un patrón histórico, identifico la existencia de un régimen institucional rígido para la gestión de los recursos hídricos y la conservación de los humedales en la región de Doñana, y explico, a través de una primera iteración teórica, los mecanismos subyacentes a la génesis, amplificación y persistencia de tal rigidez institucional. Mi explicación tiene dos partes diferenciadas: por un lado, la génesis histórica profunda del régimen en una coyuntura crítica en el siglo XIX; y por otro, la formación del régimen y su continuidad hasta las últimas décadas del siglo XX, a pesar de su disfuncionalidad para hacer frente a las crisis y su incapacidad para armonizar la conservación de humedales, la gestión del agua y el desarrollo económico. El patrón histórico confirma que el régimen institucional de Doñana ha seguido una dinámica dependiente de la trayectoria, ampliamente caracterizada por la aplicación recurrente de estrategias de mando y control a lo largo de la historia. En una aparente paradoja, estas estrategias, en lugar de conducir al régimen hacia un resultado eficiente, llevaron a la formación de un régimen institucional rígido que condujo la región de Doñana a una trampa subóptima de rigidez sistémica. Este resultado rígido puede ser calificado por la teoría como contingente, ya que desafía las expectativas tradicionales de la economía neoclásica que yacen en el núcleo lógico del concepto de dependencia de la trayectoria institucional. La tercera pregunta de investigación de la tesis se centra en el potencial explicativo del emprendimiento y los discursos en su relación con los intereses político-económicos y el poder, como factores que contribuyen a la formación de sistemas socio-ecológicos a nivel local. En particular, centro mi discusión en el potencial explicativo de estos factores, cuando la lógica base de la dependencia de la trayectoria (compuesta por los principios dominantes de la economía neoclásica) fracasa en predecir los resultados observados desde una perspectiva evolutiva histórica, calificando estos resultados como contingentes. En el Capítulo 6, emprendo una segunda iteración teórica que reexamina el patrón explicativo histórico desarrollado en el Capítulo 5, con el fin de mostrar como el régimen institucional rígido Doñana puede entenderse como más predecible. En particular, sostengo que tres mecanismos constituyeron condiciones necesarias y suficientes para el proceso de transformación que llevó a la rigidez en Doñana: (1) un mecanismo político-discursivo contextual que movilizó el poder desde arriba hacia abajo e indicó rendimientos crecientes a los actores de los niveles operacionales del régimen institucional; (2) el funcionamiento de los rendimientos crecientes y mecanismos de auto-refuerzo de abajo hacia arriba; (3) un componente endógeno de emprendimiento que actuó como mecanismo de acción en un entorno de incertidumbre extrema. En la discusión general de la tesis (Capítulo 7), presento argumentos para la sistematización, en el análisis, de los discursos y el emprendimiento en relación con factores político-económicos y de poder. Sostengo que tal sistematización contribuye significativamente a disminuir el grado de contingencia asociado a la rigidez en Doñana. Más en general, mi discusión trata sobre la contingencia como una propiedad del concepto de dependencia de la trayectoria que se puede modular en explicaciones sobre dinámica institucional. Este tipo de avances podría informar futuras políticas y diseños institucionales para una transición exitosa hacia la gobernanza y la gestión adaptativas de los sistemas socio-ecológicos, y, por lo tanto, para incrementar la posibilidad de gestionar los recursos naturales y los ecosistemas de forma más sostenible. El enriquecimiento del conocimiento adquirido durante el programa de investigaciónacción con el análisis en profundidad de las limitaciones institucionales arraigadas en factores históricos, permitieron la identificación de una serie de posibles vías que pueden ayudar a la transición hacia la gobernanza y la gestión adaptativas en la región de Doñana (Capítulo 9). Asimismo, este enriquecimiento permitió una especulación informada sobre el papel potencial de programas de investigación-acción como el que se describe en esta tesis, para cumplir con (y complementar) los requisitos para la participación pública y el aprendizaje social de la legislación de la Unión Europea – en particular, la Directiva Marco del Agua (Capítulo 7, Sección 7.4).
Считается, что фактор приносит ренту, если он оплачивается на уровне большем, чем это необходимо для обеспечения предложения услуг этого фактора. Автор исследует теоретическую проблему подмены классического понимания источников производства ренты конъюнктурной трактовкой так называемых рентных (или рентообразующих) ресурсов. В виде ренты в краткосрочном периоде производится и присваивается для дальнейшего непроизводительного потребления собственниками и пользователями факторов производства не только чистый продукт, сверхприбыль, в связи с чем предлагается концепция базовых условий производства ренты: уровни возмещения основного и человеческого капитала, а также уровень стоимости капитала. ; In classical, neoclassical and political economics, modern western literature, it is accepted to interlink production and rent acquisition with the phenomenon of production factor. It is assumed that a factor brings rent in case it is reimbursed at a higher level than it is required in order to provide offer of services of this factor. Despite various approaches in the development of some aspects of rent theory, basically all researchers of the economic category rent note the general source of its forming regardless its type excess profit (marginal product, surplus product), gained as a result of operation activity (basing on the right of ownership and/or right of economic management), limited and diverse in terms of quality resources. The objective base for excess profit here is the difference between market price and costs plus normal profit suffice for provision of reproductive process and detention of capital in that particular sector of economy. At the modern stage the problems of regulation of production processes and rent acquisition with defining of possible approaches towards elaboration and realization of rental policy of the state in the RF become very obvious. This theoretical challenge in its turn is predetermined by another one, which is more fundamental, the challenge of substitution of classical understanding of rental factors by the opportunistic treatment of the so-called rental resources. Rental resources are interlinked with specifics of one or another type of rent, with the effect of secondary factors at the stage of exchange in the reproductive process but not with the reason of rent forming at the stage of its production. In the modern Russian economy serious deformation of processes within the frames of the political economic contour rent production rent acquisition has taken place concerning the time factor and economic nature. It is known that rent is created by factors in production and is a consequence of production conditions. The way of acquisition depends on forms of ownership to factors and other legal forms. In a short-term period in the form of rent not only net product or share of add value is produced and acquired for further non-productive consumption by owners and users of production factors. For more than 20 years of market transformations chronic and large-scale absence of refunding and widened reproduction of factors capital stock and human capital, has been taking place within the environment of the existing system of pricing (liberal and leading many positions to the level of higher than the world process) in Russian monopolistic and oligopolistic economy. In this regard we suggest as fundamental conditions of rent production the following: levels of refunding of capital stock and human capital, as well as the level of capital cost.
In: The Manchester School, Volume 58, Issue 2, p. 173-208
ISSN: 1467-9957
Book Reviews in This Article Theory of Markets. By Michael Allingham. (Basingstoke, Macmillan Press, 1989, pp Contemporary Issues in Money and Banking, Essays in Honour of Stephen Frowen. Edited by Philip Arestis. (Basingstoke, Macmillan Press, 1988, pp Trade Policy Issues and Empirical Analysis. Edited by Robert E. Baldwin. (Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1988, pp Commercial Bank Lending and Third‐World Debt. By Graham Bird. (Basingstoke, Macmillan Press, 1989, pp Third World Debt: The Search for a Solution. Edited by Graham Bird. (Aldershot, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 1989, pp Disequilibrium and Macroeconomics. By Volker Bouhm. (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989, pp Statistical Games and Human Affairs: The View from Within. By Roger J. Bowden. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp From Marx to the Market: Socialism in Search of an Economic System. By Wodzimierz Brus and Kazimierz Laski. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989, pp Controversy in Applied Economics. Edited by Mike Campbell, Mike Hardy and Nige Healey. (Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989, pp Money, Trade and Payments. Essays in Honour of D. J. Coppock. Edited by David Cobham, Richard Harrington and George Zis. (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1989, pp Efficiency, Competition, and Policy. The Organization of Economic Activity, Volume II. By Harold Demsetz. (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989, pp Alternatives to Capitalism. Edited by Jon Elster and Karl Ove Moene. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp Limiting Exchange Rate Flexibility: The European Monetary System. By Francesco Giavazzi and Alberto Giovannini. (Cambridge, Mass, and London, The MIT Press, 1989, pp Money, Information and Uncertainty. (Second Edition) By C. A. E. Goodhart. (Basingstoke, Macmillan Education Ltd., 1989, pp Pioneers of Modern Economics in Britain, Volume 2. Edited by David Greenaway and John R. Presley. (Basingstoke, Macmillan Press, 1989, pp Rationality in Economics. By Shaun Hargreaves Heap. (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989, pp A History of Marxian Economics. Volume I, 1883‐1929. By M. C. Howard and J. E. King. (Basingstoke, Macmillan Education Ltd., 1989, pp Economic Exiles. By J. E. King. (Basingstoke, Macmillan Press, 1989, pp The Distribution and Redistribution of Income. By Peter J. Lambert. (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989, pp Kaldor's Political Economy. Edited by Tony Lawson, J. Gabriel Palma and John Sender. (London, Academic Press Limited, 1989, pp Liberalization and Entrepreneurship: Dynamics of Reform in Socialism and Capitalism. By Branko Milanovi. (Armonk, N.Y., M. E. Sharpe Inc., 1989, pp Political Macroeconomics. By Keizo Nagatani. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989, pp New Directions in Post‐Keynesian Economics. Edited by John Pheby. (Aldershot, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 1989, pp Classical Economic Growth. By Gavin Reid. (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989, pp Real Wages in 19th and 20th Century Europe: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Edited by Peter Scholliers. (Oxford, Berg Publishers Limited, 1989, pp Business, Time and Thought: Selected Papers of G. L. S. Shackle. Edited by Stephen F. Frowen. (Basingstoke, Macmillan Press, 1988, pp Free Market Morality: The Political Economy of the Austrian School. By Alexander H. Shand. (London, Routledge, 1989, pp Foundations of Economic Justice. By Morris Silver. (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989, pp The Economic Role of the State. By Joseph E. Stiglitzet al. Edited by Arnold Heertje. (Oxford, Basil Blackwell in association with Bank Insinger de Beaufort NV, 1989, pp A Critique of Neoclassical Macroeconomics. By John Weeks. (Basingstoke, Macmillan Press, 1989, pp
This paper shows that real effective exchange rate (REER) regressions, the standard approach for estimating the response of aggregate exports to exchange rate changes, imply biased estimates of the underlying elasticities. We provide a new aggregate regression specification that is consistent with bilateral trade flows micro-founded by the gravity equation. This theory-consistent aggregation leads to unbiased estimates when prices are set in an international currency as postulated by the dominant currency paradigm. We use Monte-Carlo simulations to compare elasticity estimates based on this new "ideal-REER" regression against typical regression specifications found in the REER literature. The results show that the biases are small (around 1 percent) for the exchange rate and large (around 10 percent) for the demand elasticity. We find empirical support for this prediction from annual trade flow data. The difference between elasticities estimated on the bilateral and aggregate levels reduces significantly when applying an ideal-REER regression rather than a standard REER approach.
In: SAIS review / the Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS): a journal of international affairs, Volume 14, Issue 2, p. 47-59
The discussion on corruption in law and economics approach is mainly run under the veil of Public choice theory and principal-agent model. This theory sees agents, politicians and bureaucrats, as rational self-maximisers who disregard public goals and as such should be monitored and sanctioned accordingly by the principal. In this context the policy makers should create incentive mechanism which imposes obstacles to corrupt behaviour. Based on this approach the anti-corruption policies created repression-prevention-transparency model. The dominant aspect of this model presents deterrence since variety of international convention insists on criminalisation of various acts of power abuse. Based on this model, countries around the world adopted anti-corruption strategies as part of their legal rules. Nevertheless, the recent researches on the effects of this move show non impressive results. The argument that "one size does not fit all" is one of the main raised by the critics. The explanation for this claim, according to criticizers, comes from the fact that not all countries are the same because their institutional setting varies. The dominant approach asks for overreliance on the criminal justice system, judiciary and police, taking for granted their impartiality and effectiveness. However, this situation is more exception than the rule in many countries around the world. The main problem of this approach according to some researcher lays in the fact that in these countries institution do not function because, even though people condemn corruption, they engage in it because they lack trust in other citizens and think that all the others are doing the same. This is identified as collective action problem as opposed to the principal-agent model. Among the countries which experience problems of corruption, even though they follow the dominant anti-corruption trends, are transitional, post-socialist countries. To this group belong the countries which are emerging from centrally planned to an open market economy. After the state's collapse international financial institutions took the leading advisory role and promoted the immediate implantation of the ideas grounded in the neoclassical economy. However, the results of this approach revealed important shortcomings, of which increased corruption was one. This outcome amplified the voices of institutional economists who from the beginning argued for gradualist approach towards the institutional change. Their claims pointed out that the change of formal institutions is not difficult to achieve. It is enough to change the written laws according to the requirements. However, the informal institutions are those which stay for a long time in people as "mental models" and they could not be changed overnight. These claims demand a deeper analysis of the social systems and their mechanisms before engaging in a design of any reform policy. Following these claims, the conclusion might be that any sound anti-corruption policy implemented in post-socialist countries should take into account their idiosyncrasies which are the results of the previous regime. The closer look to socialism provides an interesting description in terms of its institutional setting, mentality of the individuals and their interrelation. If this idiosyncrasy is taken into account the suggestion in this thesis is that in the cases of corruption combat in public administration in post-socialist countries, instead of dominant anti-corruption scheme repression-prevention-transparency, corruption combat should be improved through the implementation of a new one, structure-conduct-performance. This scheme in its first element, the structure, includes the type of public administration which should be implemented because it curbs corruption the best way. Analysis provided a view which puts the Neo Weberian State as the first best and Weberian administration as the second best solution. The second element, the conduct, should be treated according to the Responsive Regulation theory. Based on it an anti-corruption pyramid if implemented might provide the optimal results. This pyramid aims to coordinate human's preferences, propensity to corruption based in cultural specificities and transparency and accountability, and to put constraints on unwanted behaviour by imposing administrative and criminal sanctions. Regarding relevant cultural aspects pyramid addresses: universalism and particularism, individualism and collectivism, and power distance. The imposition of sanctions is further regulated by disciplinary anti-corruption pyramid and criminal anti-corruption pyramid whose implementation is based on the type of the corrupt act in question: if it is "legal" then the former pyramid should be applied and if it is "illegal" the latter one. Finally, if the first two elements are implemented the anti-corruption performance should be improved. This new "pyramid approach", suggested to post-socialist countries, asks public administration itself to engage in corruption combat, leaving criminal justice system as the ultimate weapon, used only for the very harmful misdeeds. With this self-control mechanism, administration should be able to build internal coherence and strength. There is no doubt that corruption harms societies in many ways and that policy makers should promote zero tolerance to corruption. However in the case of transitional countries instead of the first best, for a while the second best solution should be applied which is suggested by the anti-corruption pyramid(s). Going one step back does not necessarily mean failure but rather taking a run at faster improvement.
Inhaltsangabe: Introduction: In 1886, when New Zealand passed the 'New Zealand Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act' it was the first modern country to enact a minimum wage. Half a century later on June 25, 1938, US-President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law America's first minimum wage: 25 cents an hour. Since that time minimum wages are a frequent topic of international economic science. Many economists have discussed the question whether or not a statutory wage floor is a useful tool for achieving social goals. Especially the Chicago School of Economics and its representatives like Milton Friedman or George Stigler rejected minimum wage policies. They were supported by ordoliberal economists like Walter Eucken or Friedrich Hayek. On the other side, supporters of Keynesian theories have often been in favor of statutory wage floors. For a long time most economists restricted research about the impact of minimum wages to its employment effects in industrial countries. By doing that, there was an astonishing accordance that the effects are insignificant if the minimum wage is low and employment-reducing if it is above a certain threshold. But in the last twenty years, there has been a new discussion about whether or not this result can be proved with recent data and new econometric methods. Especially the study by Card and Krueger in 1994 called the negative employment effects into question. However, minimum wages are not intended to stimulate employment but to increase the welfare of poor workers. Therefore, economic research should focus on the welfare effects of institutional wage floors. This includes employment and price effects as well as the impact on human capital accumulation. In other words, analyses about minimum wages must comprise a couple of indicators for welfare. Another weak point of minimum wage research is its focus on industrial countries. There is little evidence about minimum wages' impact on poverty in developing or emerging economies. Since a large share of the population in poor countries still suffers from enormous destitution and minimum wages are intended to alleviate poverty, it is of great interest whether or not this goal has be achieved. Argentina is an upper-middle income country and experienced a severe economic crisis in 2001/2002 with a dramatic downfall of the GDP. Since then the country has rebounded and poverty rates have decreased substantially. At the same time, the Argentine government raised the statutory minimum wage dramatically from 200 pesos in 2003 to 1,240 pesos six years later.Inhaltsverzeichnis:Table of Contents: 1.Introduction1 1.1Research Puzzle and Relevance of the Topic1 1.2Objective and Structure of the Bachelor's Thesis2 2.Literature3 2.1General Theory of Minimum Wages3 2.2Minimum Wages in Industrial Countries6 2.3Minimum Wages in Developing Countries7 2.4Pros and Cons of Minimum Wages8 3.Minimum Wages in Argentina11 3.1Economic Situation11 3.2Minimum Wage Policy12 4.Econometric Methods14 4.1Wage Distribution14 4.2Kaitz-Index15 4.3Meyer-Wise Approach16 4.4Regression Analysis16 4.5Difference in Difference Estimation18 5.Empirical Analysis20 5.1Dataset20 5.2Descriptive Statistics21 5.3Research Design21 5.4Expectations and Hypotheses23 5.5Empirical Findings24 5.6Problems and Sensitivity Analysis27 5.7Comparison with other Articles28 6.Conclusion30 Bibliography33 Appendix Part I – Tables Appendix Part II – FiguresTextprobe:Text Sample: Chapter 2.1,General Theory of Minimum Wages: One of the first and most cited articles about minimum wages was written by George Stigler in 1946. He describes the divergent effects in competitive and monopsonistic labor markets. In the competitive case, the market clearing wage is efficient and cannot be improved. A minimum wage will either reduce employment or - if it is below the equilibrium wage - will have no employment effect. On the other hand, in a monopsonistic labor market, the equilibrium wage is below the efficient level and an appropriately set minimum can increase welfare. Stigler stresses the word 'appropriately' with the sentence: A uniform national minimum wage, infrequently changed, is wholly unsuited to these diversities of conditions. In addition, Stigler argues that minimum wage policy might not help those it is intended to help. This may be the case if low-wage members of wealthier households, such as teenagers, get higher wages at the expense of the displaced underclass workers. Furthermore, Stigler discusses what might be the effect of a minimum wage on the uncovered sector: If some workers lose their jobs in the formal sector and begin offering labor in the shadow economy, the wages in the informal sector may fall. To sum up, Stigler asserts that minimum wages are an inappropriate tool for helping poor people because its many economic distortions. For this reason he is in favor of subsidizing low incomes if the society thinks that the workers deserve a higher remuneration. This neoclassical view of minimum wages has been the standard economic theory for several decades and is still taught in introductory courses. Nonetheless, a lot of economists generated more complex models and discussed other aspects of minimum wages. Deepak Lal discusses and summarizes some of the main new arguments against and in favor of minimum wage legislation. He presents for example a study by Harry Johnson who argues that wages in the uncovered sector do not necessarily fall with an increase of the minimum wage. This may be the case if the formal sector is more capital-intensive than the uncovered sector.
While employment issues are at the center of African household concerns and economic policy debates, there are few comprehensive analyzes of sub-Saharan African labor markets [SSA]. As if research had trouble seizing this object. The countries of the region are marked by a great shortage of formal employment, wages that provide little information on the efficiency of work, an employment relationship that is both precarious and rarely sustainable, and labor firms and institutions that are few and particularly fragile. The objective of this paper is to discuss the relevance of the labor market concept in sub-Saharan African countries. Based on a literature review and an ongoing action research, we will ask whether we can talk about labor markets in SSA countries, whether we can think of them in terms of neoclassical economic theory. The approach assumes a close alliance between empirical and theoretical research that goes back to the foundation of modern science. The result is a flexibility and a medium theoretical scope of the trends, significant cases, and hypotheses that we will advance throughout the following lines (Franck, 2009; Merton, 1951). The originality of this study is that it combines an interrogation of the rationality of the labor market in the context and problematic of development in sub-Saharan Africa, which can be summarized as the question of the capacity of sub-Saharan economies to significantly reduce poverty through the creation of decent employment opportunities (Zerbo, 2006). The hypothesis we defend in this research note is that the African field is resistant to the classical – i.e. Western – conception of labor markets, insofar as the various theories available are insufficient or unsuited to the reality of local markets. JEL Classification : J01, J46,N57,O14,O55, Z1 Paper type: Theoretical Research ; Alors que les problèmes liés à l'emploi sont au centre des préoccupations des ménages africains et au cœur des débats sur les politiques économiques, on ne dispose que de peu d'analyses d'ensemble des marchés du travail d'Afrique subsaharienne [ASS]. Comme si la recherche avait du mal à s'emparer de cet objet. Les pays de la région sont marqués par une grande insuffisance de l'emploi formel, des salaires qui n'instruisent que très faiblement sur l'efficacité du travail, une relation de travail qui est à la fois précaire et rarement durable, des firmes et des institutions du travail peu abondantes et particulièrement fragiles. L'objectif de cet article est de discuter de la pertinence du concept de marché du travail dans les pays d'Afrique subsaharienne. En nous appuyant sur une revue de la littérature et une recherche-action en cours, nous nous demanderons si on peut parler de marchés du travail dans les pays d'ASS, si on peut les penser à l'aune de la théorie économique néoclassique. La démarche assume une alliance étroite entre recherche empirique et recherche théorique qui remonte à la fondation des sciences modernes. Il en ressort une souplesse et une portée théorique moyenne des tendances, cas significatifs et hypothèses que nous avancerons tout au long des lignes suivantes (Franck, 2009; Merton, 1951). L'originalité de cette étude est de mêler une interrogation sur la rationalité du marché du travail dans le contexte et la problématique du développement de l'Afrique subsaharienne, qui peut se résumer à la question de la capacité des économies subsahariennes à réduire significativement la pauvreté par la création d'opportunités d'emplois décents (Zerbo, 2006). L'hypothèse que nous défendons dans cette note de recherche est que le terrain africain est rétif à la conception classique – c'est-à-dire occidentale – des marchés du travail, dans la mesure où les différentes théories disponibles sont insuffisantes ou inadaptées à recouper la réalité des marchés locaux. Classification JEL : J01, J46,N57,O14,O55, Z1 Type de l'article: Article théorique
Introduction. A sociological analysis of the personality of the bribe-giver is given based on the study of data on the Republic of Mordovia. The relevance of the issue is determined by the following factors: the strengthening of the negative impact of corruption on all aspects of society and the state; the social mimicry of corruption, the stability of ideas in society about the ambivalence of corruption. The purpose of the article is to highlight the regional specifics of the identity of the bribe-giver.Methodology and sources. The neoclassical paradigm of the study of corruption links corruption phenomena with the decomposition of the state apparatus and the erosion of the moral foundations of society. In this vein, the authors explore the dual nature of corruption, that is, its conditionality by both the government and society. In the context of Durkheim's anomie theory, the motivational complex of bribe-takers is analyzed.Results and discussion. The objectives of the study required a mass survey (n = 400, ∆ ±5%), which represented the composition of the population of the region by gender, age, type of activity and type of locality. Within the framework of the study, a qualitative and quantitative description of the corrupt behavior of the bribe-giver was carried out, his motivational complex was revealed, and his subjective assessment of the dynamics of corruption and the effectiveness of anti-corruption policy was revealed. The following regional features of the personality of the bribe-giver are revealed: the age of the highest economic and social lability, the average level of corruption activity, the low size of the average amount of a bribe, acting as the initiator of a corrupt bribe, the perception of a bribe as a rational means of solving problems, pronounced negativism in assessing the authorities.Conclusion. Participation in corrupt transactions imposes a more or less pronounced imprint on the personality of the bribe-giver, which consists in the deformation of the practices of relations with representatives of state bodies, the gradual loss of immunity to criminal or semi-criminal activities, the partial degradation of socially significant moral values, the transformation of corrupt practices from a social anomie to a social norm. ; Введение. Дается социологический анализ личности взяткодателя на основе изучения данных по Республике Мордовия. Актуальность вопроса обусловлена следующими факторами: усиление негативного влияния коррупции на все стороны жизни общества и государства; социальная мимикрия коррупции; устойчивость представлений в социуме об амбивалентности коррупции. Цель статьи – выделить региональную специфику личности взяткодателя.Методология и источники. Неоклассическая парадигма изучения коррупции увязывает коррупционные явления с разложением государственного аппарата и разъеданием нравственных устоев общества. Авторы в этом ключе исследуют двоякую сущность коррупции, т. е. ее обусловленность и властью, и социумом. В контексте теории аномии Дюркгейма анализируется мотивационный комплекс взяткодателей.Результаты и обсуждение. Задачи исследования потребовали проведения массового опроса (n = 400, ∆ ±5 %), которое репрезентировало состав населения региона по полу, возрасту, роду деятельности и типу населенного пункта. В рамках исследования проведено качественно-количественное описание коррупционного поведения взяткодателя, выявлен его мотивационный комплекс, выявлена его субъективная оценка динамики коррупции и эффективности антикоррупционной политики. Выявлены следующие региональные особенности личности взяткодателя: возраст наивысшей экономической и социальной лабильности, средний уровень коррупционной активности, низкий размер средней суммы взятки, выступление в качестве инициатора коррупционной взятки, восприятие взятки как рационального средства решения проблем, выраженный негативизм при оценке власти.Заключение. Участие в коррупционных сделках накладывает на личность взяткодателя в той или иной степени выраженный отпечаток, заключающийся в деформации практик взаимоотношений с представителями государственных органов, постепенной утрате иммунитета к криминальной или полукриминальной деятельности, частичной деградации социально значимых морально-нравственных ценностей, превращении коррупционных практик из социальной аномии в социальную норму.
Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874-1949) iktisat yazınında iş çevrimleri ile ilgili olarak yaptığı ampirik çalışmalarla bilinir. Günümüzde de halen en prestijli kurumlardan biri olarak kabul edilen Ulusal İktisadi Araştırmalar Bürosu (National Bureau of Economic Research-NBER)'nun kurucusu ve 1949 yılına kadar yürütücüsüdür. Mitchell NBER'de yaptığı çalışmalarla gerek dönemin gelişmiş ülkelerinde yaşanan çevrimlere ilişkin kapsamlı bir veri seti oluşturmuş gerek de bu çevrimleri analiz edebilmek için çok sayıda istatistiksel ölçüm ve analiz yöntemi geliştirmiştir. Bu çalışmalar, Mitchell'ın iktisat yazınında daha çok ampirik bir iktisatçı olarak ün kazanmasına neden olmuştur. Mitchell'ın analizinde ampirik analiz yöntemini yoğun bir şekilde kullanması katkısının esas olarak ampirik gözlemlerden ibaret olduğu ve teorik açıdan iş çevrimleri literatürüne önemli bir katkı yapmadığı yolunda eleştiriler almasına neden olmuştur. Mitchell'ın ampirizmini değerlendirirken onun bir kurumsal iktisatçı olduğu ve hocası Veblen'in neoklasik iktisada yönelttiği eleştirileri ve evrimsel bir bilim için önerilerini paylaştığı göz önünde bulundurulmalıdır. Bu çalışmanın amacı, Mitchell'in iş çevrimleri analizini kuramsal düzeyde incelemek ve iş çevrimleri literatürüne yaptığı katkıyı değerlendirmektir. Bu amaç doğrultusunda bu çalışma dört bölümden oluşmaktadır. Birinci bölümde, Mitchell'ın iş çevrimleri literatüründeki yerini ortaya koymak amacıyla iş çevrimlerine ilişkin teorik gelişmelerin kısa bir özetine yer verilecektir. İkinci bölümde, Mitchell'in "para ekonomisi" olarak nitelendirdiği modern kapitalizme ilişkin görüşleri değerlendirilecek; üçüncü bölümde, Mitchell'ın iş çevrimlerinin nasıl ortaya çıktığı, hangi aşamalardan geçtiği ve bu aşamaları niteleyen temel özelliklerin neler olduğuna ilişkin görüşlerine yer verilerek Mitchell'ın iş çevrimleri analizi kuramsal düzeyde incelenecektir. Son bölümde ise, Mitchell'ın söz konusu iş çevrimlerinin kapitalist sistem içinde denetim altına alınıp alınamayacağı yolundaki görüşlerine ve buradan yola çıkarak istikrarsızlıkları ortadan kaldırmak için önerdiği politikalara değinilecektir. Çalışma söz konusu bilgiler ışığında Mitchell'ın iş çevrimleri kuramının önemi ve literatüre katkısının değerlendirilmesi ile son bulacaktır. ; Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874-1949) is known for his empirical studies regarding business cycles in economics literature. He is the founder and until 1949 was the executive head of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) which is still considered to be one of the most prestigious institutions nowadays. By his studies Mitchell not only created a comprehensive set of data related to cycles in developed countries, but also developed a number of statistical measurements and analysis methods in order to analyze these cycles. These studies made him to be considered as an empirical economist. Due to an intensive usage of empirical methods in his analysis, he was critized that his contribution consisted of solely empirical observations and that from a theoretical standpoint he did not make a significant contribution to the business cycles literature. When evaluating Mitchell's empricism, it should be taken into account that Mitchell is an institutional economist and that he shared both Veblen's critics toward the neoclassical economics and his proposals for an evolutionary science. The aim of this study is to examine the business cycles analysis of Mitchell theoretically and to evaluate his contribution to the business cycles literature. In this regard, this study consists of four parts. In the first part, a short summary of the theoretical developments about business cycles will be given in order to assess the place of Mitchell in that literature. In the second part, his views about the modern capitalism as he calls "monetary economy" will be evaluated. By putting forth his arguments as to how his business cycles have emerged, from which stages they have proceeded and what the main characteristics of these stages are, in the third part Mitchell's business cycle analysis will be examined on a theoretical level. In the last part, his opinions about whether the aforementioned business cycles can be regulated in the capitalist system and parting from here, his policy proposals to eliminate the instabilities will be mentioned. The study will end with an evaluation of importance of Mitchell's business cycle theory and his contribution to the literature.
