Privatization in Denmark, 1980-2002

Denmark is one of the most developed welfare states, but also a rather capitalistic state with little public ownership outside the traditional fields of the public sector and the natural monopolies of the network industries. The low level of public ownership corresponds to peoples’ attitude in polls. Nevertheless, 12 privatizations of state companies have been made along with everybody else. No statistics on privatization have been previously published in Denmark. Most of the 12 privatizations are small, and the telephone company provides 76 percent of the total revenue. In the municipal sector, however, most privatization activity appears to be outsourcing.Privatization, outsourcing, capitalist values

Bureaucratic Tax-Seeking: The Danish Waste Tax

Two main results in traditional tax theory states the following. First, general taxes minimize the welfare loss from changed relative prices. Second, because the total public budget tends to exceed the optimal size, a leader (here named ‘troop leader’) is needed in the budget process to prevent over-taxation. Nevertheless, differentiated taxes initiated by individual ministries generate a still larger proportion of total tax revenue, in particular under cover of taxing externalities such as environmental pollution. We suggest that this situation leads to over-taxation for two reasons. First, the absence of a strong and fully informed troop leader prevents rational coordination of collective action. Second, budget maximization leads to overwhelming fiscal pressure because bureaucracies are competing about resources just like fishermen or hunters (here named ‘bureaucratic tax-seeking’). Taxing citizens or firms is like harvesting rents from a natural resource and therefore we apply a common-pool resource model. Because bureaucracies compete about maximizing their share of tax payers‘ money, this leads to over-taxation and an irrational outcome for both bureaucrats and society. These suggestions are strongly confirmed by the case of the Danish waste tax. Thus, we recommend that bureaucratic institutions should coordinate their tax-seeking efforts to maximize budgets in the long run and that the ministries that collect green tax revenues should not be allowed to control these revenues. Such a budget maximization opportunity would kick off a new self-destructive fiscal race among competing tax-seeking bureaucracies.Bureaucratic tax-seeking; Troop leader; Common-pool resource model; Green taxation; Waste tax

The Janus Head Article - On Quality in the Documentation Process

The god Janus in Greek mythology was a two-faced god; each face had its own view of the world. Our idea behind the Janus Head article is to give you two different and maybe even contradicting views on a certain topic. In this issue the topic is quality in the documentation process. In the first half of this issue’s Janus Head Article translators from the international company Grundfos give us their view of quality and how quality is managed in the documentation process at Grundfos. In the second half of the Janus Head Article scholars from the University of Southern Denmark describe and discuss quality in the documentation process at Grundfos from a researcher’s point of view

Towards Diagram Understanding: A Pilot Study Measuring Cognitive Workload Through Eye-Tracking

We investigate model understanding, in particular , how the quality of the UML diagram layout impacts cognitive load. We hypothesize that this w ill have a significant impact on the structure and effectiveness of engineers’ communication. In previous work, we have studied task performance measurements and subjective assessments; here, we also investigate behavioral indicators such as fixation and pupillary dilation. We use such indicators to explore diagram understanding- and reading strategies and how such strategies are impacted, e.g. by diagram type and expertise level. In the pilot eye-tracking experiment run so far, we have only examined a small number of participants (n=4), so our results are preliminary in nature and do not afford far reaching conclusions. They do, however, corroborate findings from earlier experiments, for example, showing that layout quality indeed matters and improves understanding. Our results also give rise to a number of new hypotheses about diagram understanding strategies that we are investigating in an ongoing data acquisition campaign

ProNoLa: Nyt nordisk forskningsprojekt om ret og religion

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