Optimal Timing and Location in Competitive Markets

The choice of a good location strategy is one of the most crucial decisions facing a retailer. While a number of recent articles have addressed the issue of site selection, the related issue of optimal timing and preemption has been largely ignored. In this paper, we present an integrated location allocation model that allows a retailer to formulate an overall location strategy by addressing the questions of how many stores to open, where to open them, and when to open them. In addition, the model explicitly incorporates demand growth scenarios and takes into account the dynamics of competitive actions. As an illustration of its use, the model is applied to a simple yet realistic decision scenario.     

Human Development and Decent Work: Why some Concepts Succeed and Others Fail to Make an Impact

This article examines the impact of the International Labour Organization's concept of Decent Work on development thinking and the academic literature. We attempt to answer the question of what makes a development initiative successful by comparing the decent work approach to the United Nation Development Programme's Human Development concept (in conjunction with the human development indicator). We consider that the latter has been one of the most successful development concepts ever to have been launched, while the impact of decent work by comparison has been limited. Our hypothesis relating to the question of what makes a development initiative successful has three fundamental components: first, a solid theoretical foundation has to justify the launch of a development concept. A second vital factor is the availability of sufficient national and internationally comparable data that enables researchers and policy makers alike to apply the concept, preferably by means of a synthetic indicator. Third, the political will and institutional structure of the development institution that launches a concept is a key factor, particularly if data availability is limited as countries then have to be persuaded to generate new data.     

The Social Regulation of Markets: Why Microcredit Fails to Promote Jobs in Rural South India

There is growing evidence that microcredit does little to support self‐employment. Two main explanations are typically emphasized: from a microeconomic perspective, the poor have been argued to lack the skills, resources and motivation to start their own businesses; from a macroeconomic perspective, local markets are often saturated. This article uses first‐hand data from rural South India to explore a third explanation which focuses on the social regulation of markets. Drawing on a household survey, the authors show that self‐employment and microcredit are uncorrelated, and that women and lower castes have a significantly lower chance of starting up a business. The businesses they do start tend to be smaller, less profitable and based in very specific sectors. Qualitative insights into the workings of local economies show that caste and gender‐based social regulations influence local markets determining who can produce or sell what, to whom, and at what price. The authors observe that real markets are affected by power relations and structured through social institutions rather than being the sum of interactions between free and competitive individuals. These findings show the importance of integrating self‐employment programmes into broader policies for transforming the social regulation of markets and for eradicating discrimination against women and lower castes.     

Testing for the Law of One Price and Identifying Price-Leading Markets: An Application to Corn Markets in Benin

A data-determined method is proposed to test for the law of one price as a long-run equilibrium condition and to identify which markets in a network of spatially dispersed commodity markets quote the reference price. The method consists of supplementing Johansen's FIML cointegration procedure with a permanent-transitory decomposition and rules of inference in linear time-series models with unit roots. As an example, we apply our method to prices of six corn markets in Benin. We find that the law of one price holds in the long-run. It appears that two rural markets quote the reference price: their prices adjust fastest towards the permanent change induced by the common stochastic trend.     

Local Histories,Global Markets: Cocoa and Class in Upland Sulawesi

Research and policy concerning the Southeast Asian uplands have generally focused on issues of cultural diversity, conservation and community resource management. This article argues for a reorientation of analysis to highlight the increasingly uneven access to land, labour and capital stemming from processes of agrarian differentiation in upland settings. It draws upon contrasting case studies from two areas of Central Sulawesi to explore the processes through which differentiation occurs, and the role of local histories of agriculture and settlement in shaping farmers’ responses to new market opportunities. Smallholders have enthusiastically abandoned their diversified farming systems to invest their land and labour in a new global crop, cocoa, thereby stimulating a set of changes in resource access and social relations that they did not anticipate. The concept of agency drawn from a culturally oriented political economy guides the analysis of struggles over livelihoods, land entitlements, and the reconfiguration of community, as well as the grounds on which new collective visions emerge.     

Why praise Jews: satire and history in the middle ages

Modern readers, including highly sophisticated, professional historians, have not always understood that medieval praise of jews, in its rare occurrences, never signifies categorical approval of Israelites. Instead, such praise functions as a condemnation, sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit, of Christians whose behavior is not even equal to that of the lowest members of society. The elaborate story told by Richard of Devizes about the murder, towards the end of the twelfth century, of a young Christian by a Jew at Winchester provides a clear illustration of the problem.     

Markets,Transaction Costs and Institutions: Compensating for Nuclear Risk in Japan

This article explores the nature, role and effectiveness of compensation mechanisms in managing the political constraints to the siting or development of nuclear projects in Japan. Statistical analysis reveals that the relationship between compensation and income is a key dynamic characterising the history of the marketplace for nuclear facilities in Japan. The commodification and trading of risks for benefits is governed by a sophisticated institutional and policy framework which acts to lower the transaction costs of market exchange. The interaction between the market and the institutional dynamic has generated a curious pattern of both NIMBY ('not in my backyard') and YIMBY ('yes, in my backyard') responses to nuclear development in Japan.     

Elusive Empowerment: Price Information and Disintermediation in Soybean Markets in Malwa,India

Price information provision and disintermediation have often been considered means to empower farmers, since lack of information and multiple intermediaries are seen as major obstacles preventing farmers from obtaining a higher price for their produce. Using the example of soybean in Malwa, central India, which is a cash crop that links farmers to global consumers, this article argues that the very expectation of disintermediation in the soybean supply chain is misleading. India's position in these global networks puts farmers and intermediaries in Malwa in the position of price receivers: they are unable to influence the global price of soybean or manipulate its local price in any way. In this context, providing price information has negligible impact on the final price obtained by farmers. The potential for empowerment has to be understood more broadly, by mapping out the ways in which power is exercised by various actors in the marketplace — one of which is the determination of the quality of a farmer's crop. This article maps such possibilities by examining how norms regarding quality in soybean are created and enforced, and how they are influenced by broader logics that go beyond the soybean marketplace itself.     

Local Democracy and Local Government Efficiency: The Case of Elected Executives in Australian Local Government

In the international context it has been argued that institutional reform to leadership in local government can improve the sector in terms of both its democratic legitimacy and its operational efficiency. In Australia, despite two decades of far-reaching reform processes across state government jurisdictions, focused heavily on structural change, local government still faces daunting problems, yet the potential of reform to political leadership as a method of alleviating these problems has not been fully explored. This paper thus examines the applicability of alternative leadership models to Australian local government, in particular the elected executive model which characterises some American and European local government systems. We argue that the introduction of elected executives could prove problematic in terms of accountability and representation in Australian local government.     

“第七次革命”:政府机构改革进展态势及问题

从建国到现在 ,已经过去了的机构改革有六次 ,加上现在正在进行的一共七次。第七次政府机构改革从 1 998年开始 ,舆论称之为“第七次革命”。总起来看 ,以前的六次行政机构改革尽管力度各不相同 ,裁员、缩编和机构撤并情况不大一样 ,但是它们却有一个共同特点 ,即那些改革不是旨在通过精简机构和裁减人员来达到调整行政机构整体功能和职能的过程 ,而仅仅停留在对机构和人员数量的简单减少上 ,人们称之为“机械式”改革。因为没有改革政府运行机制和职能 ,因而就不可避免地导致“精简———膨胀———再精简———再膨胀”和“越精简越膨胀”的逆向恶性循环现象     

Shared Resources and Competitive Advantage in Clustered Firms: The Missing Link

This study examines the mechanism by which shared resources act on clustered firms' strategic resources to impact firm performance. Results indicate that five different kinds of cluster-specific shared resources have significant and positive effects on strategic resources to various degrees. Results also show that four elements of strategic resources have significant and positive effects on competitive advantage of firms. The framework developed in this study thus suggests that internal strategic resources and capabilities of firms mediate the relationship between shared resources and competitive advantage of firms in clusters.