Consensus Versus Incentives: A Skeptical Look at Regulatory Negotiation

Some recommendations are designed to improve the efficiency of public regulation. Incentive-based systems, for example, can make government policies more cost-effective. Other recommendations are disembodied law reforms, espoused without much concern for the substantive problems to which they might apply. This Comment contrasts one of these recommendations - regulatory negotiation - with incentive-based proposals

The Role of the World Bank in Controlling Corruption

In 1997, Professor of Law and Political Science, Susan Rose-Ackerman of Yale University, delivered the Georgetown Law Center’s seventeenth Annual Philip A. Hart Memorial Lecture: The World Bank’s Role in Controlling Corruption. Susan Rose-Ackerman is Henry R. Luce Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale University, and Co-director of the Law School’s Center for Law, Economics, and Public Policy. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Fullbright Commission. She was a visiting Research Fellow at the World Bank in 1995-96 where she did research on corruption and economic development. She is the author of Corruption and Government Causes, Consequences and Reform (1999), Controlling Environmental Policy: The Limits of Public Law in Germany and the United States (1995); Rethinking the Progressive Agenda: The Reform of the American Regulatory State (1992); and Corruption: A Study in Political Economy (1978); and joint author of The Uncertain Search for Environmental Quality (1974) and The Nonprofit Enterprise in Market Economies (1986). She has published widely in law, economics, and policy journals. Her research interests include comparative regulatory law and policy, the political economy of corruption, public policy and administrative law, and law and economics. In this essay Professor Rose-Ackerman discuses how widespread corruption is a symptom that the state is functioning poorly. Ineffective states can retard and misdirect economic growth. International aid and lending organizations have begun to focus on corruption control as part of a general rethinking of their role in the post-Cold War world. Both James Wolfensohn, the President of the World Bank (Bank), and Michel Camdessus, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have put the control of corruption on their institutions\u27 agendas. Nevertheless, some argue that corruption is a political issue and is, therefore, outside the purview of the World Bank. Corruption, however, has fundamental economic impacts and is thus an appropriate area for World Bank and IMF concern. Bribes represent illegal user fees, taxes, or access charges paid to public agents. These payments influence economic decisions ranging from the size and character of public investment projects to the level of compliance with business regulations. It is difficult to see how a concern for the economic costs of corruption can be responsibly excluded from World Bank lending criteria

Corporate reputation and B2B inter-firm partnerships

In our networked world today, business-to-business (B2B) inter-firm partnerships are increasingly a feature of the organisation. At the same time, corporate reputation has been strongly identified as a key factor in the success of organisations (Fombrun & Van Riel, 2004; Fryxell & Wang, 1994). However, reputation has most often been looked at from the perspective of a single organisation and how its stakeholders perceive it. By comparison, less attention has been paid to the importance of the reputations of organisations when they form a partnership. This is surprising given that partnerships are to be found in so many walks of life today including business, sport, the arts and the media. B2B partnerships are often the subject of significant investments and it is therefore important to understand the value that can be derived from them. An example of a successful B2B partnership is that of the Boeing Company with Rolls-Royce plc. The reputations of each are synergistic and together they are seen as pioneers in greener air travel with the new Trent 1000 range of multi-fuel (kerosene/biofuel mix), efficient and quiet jet engines used as part of the 787 Dreamliner product family of commercial aircraft. Successful partnerships are those in which close collaboration arises because of synergistic skills and complementary outlooks that result in positive outcomes. These partnerships have reputations, and in some cases create a strong advantage over competitors by broadcasting a jointly fostered sense of identity and culture with employees and a sense of community and loyalty that attracts other stakeholders. If the reputations of such partnerships are important to those within the dyadic exchange (Bennett & Gabriel, 2001; Arend, 2009), then there is merit in assessing the impact of partnership reputation more widely in a network setting. This report discusses the importance of corporate reputation and the characteristics and outcomes that result from such B2B partnership reputations. It is based upon work conducted jointly at Henley Business School and Albers School of Business and Economics at the University of Seattle, and which has been published in the Industrial Marketing Management journal (Money et al, 2010)

Principles under pressure : Student teachers' perspectives on final teaching practice in early childhood classrooms

Global concerns about what constitutes an appropriate curriculum and pedagogy for young children inevitably raises questions for teacher educators and the content of teacher education programmes. These concerns have been particularly visible in England following recent policy initiatives and the resultant ‘academic shovedown’ and ‘high stakes’ performativity culture in schools. Against this background, this article reports on a qualitative study of student teachers’ experiences of their final teaching practice, identifying pressure from a range of sources to deliver a more formalised curriculum than they were prepared for in their university-based courses. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner among others, we consider the socio-political and -cultural sources of pressure linked through human agency, and the implications of these for teacher educators. The study argues that student teachers of young children may be faced with cognitive and emotional dissonance between the content of university-based training on the one hand, which promotes a developmentally appropriate, play-based approach in keeping with the Early Years Foundation Stage (the statutory curricular framework in England), and the reality of pedagogical practice in early years settings on the other

The role of macrophages in the non-specific stimulation of the antibody response as studied in vitro

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Becoming a Child Care Provider

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Foreign Direct Investment and the Business Environment in Developing Countries: the Impact of Bilateral Investment Treaties

Bilateral Investment Treaty’s effects on FDI and the domestic business environment remain unexplored despite the proliferation of treaties over the past several years. This paper asks whether BITs stimulate FDI flows to host countries, and if the treaties have any impact on the environment for domestic private investment. We find a weak relationship between BITs and FDI. However, for risky countries, BITs attract greater amounts of FDI. We also find a weak relationship between BITs and the domestic investment environment. Thus, while BITs may not alter the domestic investment environment, they also may not be fulfilling their primary objective.

High-level rent-seeking and corruption in African regimes : theory and cases

One explanation for Africa's failure to develop is the weakness of its public institutions. The authors consider one aspect of that weakness: rent-seeking and corruption at the top of government. Under the conditions of their model, and autocrat who seeks to maximize personal financial return favors an inefficiently large public sector and distorts other public sector priorities more than does an autocrat who seeks to maximize national income. However, if civil servants and public officials are also venal, the ruler will not favor so large a government. To show how African regimes operate, the authors present four cases illustrating issues raised by their theoretical model. Among their observations about the relationship between the motivations of top officials and policies to control corruption and other types of rent-seeking are these: A kleptocrat whose decision variable is the level of government intervention in the economy will select an excessive level of interventions, in which national income is less than optimal. Like all monopolies, the kleptocrat seeks productive efficiency except where inefficiency creates extra rents. Facing a kleptocrat, citizens prefer a smaller than optimal-sized government but get one that is too big. A kleptocrat may need to permit lower-level officials to share in corrupt gains thus introducing additional costs. He or she will then favor a smaller government than if subordinates could be perfectly controlled. Dropping the assumption of a single dimension of government intervention, the kleptocrat will favor a different mixture of tax, spending, and regulatory programs than will a benevolent autocrat. Dropping the assumption that rulers are writing on a clean slate, decisions to privatize or nationalize firms can differ across autocratic regimes. In particular, although kleptocrats will often be reluctant to privatize, they may in some cases support privatization that a benevolent ruler would oppose. Investment in countries with kleptocratic rules may have an overly short-run orientation. When rent-seeking at top levels is pervasive, both natural resources and foreign aid under state control may hamper, not encourage, growth.Decentralization,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Labor Policies,Economic Theory&Research,National Governance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Governance Indicators,Health Economics&Finance

A Task Force on Deafness in the Education of Medical Students

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