Athenian Democracy
In: Studies in Choice and Welfare; Mathematical Theory of Democracy, S. 3-36
110 Ergebnisse
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In: Studies in Choice and Welfare; Mathematical Theory of Democracy, S. 3-36
In: Studies in Choice and Welfare; Mathematical Theory of Democracy, S. 95-158
In: Studies in Choice and Welfare; Mathematical Theory of Democracy, S. 285-318
In: Studies in Choice and Welfare; Mathematical Theory of Democracy, S. 353-423
In: Studies in Choice and Welfare; Mathematical Theory of Democracy, S. 319-352
In: Studies in Choice and Welfare; Mathematical Theory of Democracy, S. 425-446
In: Studies in Choice and Welfare; Mathematical Theory of Democracy, S. 523-535
In: Studies in Choice and Welfare; Mathematical Theory of Democracy, S. 479-504
In: Studies in Choice and Welfare; Mathematical Theory of Democracy, S. 505-520
In economics and other social sciences, complex processes are often represented by numerical models of reality which more or less well reflect behavioral relationships and interactions. Such attempts are the subject of a lecture course 'Mathematical Theory of Democracy' by the author at the Faculty of Economics of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. One new result in this field is presented here in the form of a statistical test to decide whether a political party or coalition of parties represents a majority of the population. For this purpose, party or coalition positions on a sample of policy issues, like introduction of a legal nationwide minimum wage, privatization of railways, and others, are compared with the results of public opinion polls on the same issues. The test is based on estimating the statistical significance of the coincidence observed (i.e. how likely is the coincidence by chance) to the end of accepting or rejecting the representativeness hypothesis. The test is developed for single parties and coalitions of two or three parties. It is illustrated with an estimation of representativeness of five major German parties and their potential coalitions basing on the official party manifestos published before the German parliamentary elections 2009 and on relevant polls of public opinion. ; In der Ökonomie und den anderen Sozialwissenschaften wird immer wieder versucht, komplexe Prozesse der Wirklichkeit durch numerische Modelle abzubilden - was mit Abstraktionen für z. B. Verhaltens- und Wirkungsrelationen mehr oder weniger gut gelingt. Solche Versuche sind Gegenstand einer Vorlesungsreihe 'Mathematische Theorie der Demokratie' des Autors an der Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Fakultät des Karlsruhe Institut für Technologie. Ein neues Ergebnis in diesem Bereich wird hier vorgelegt in Form eines statistischen Tests, der entscheiden soll, ob eine politische Partei oder eine Parteienkoalition repräsentativ im Sinn der Bevölkerungsmehrheit agiert. Zu diesem Zweck wird die Übereinstimmung von Parteien- oder Koalitionspositionen mit Ergebnissen von Meinungsumfragen in der Bevölkerung verglichen, etwa zur Einführung eines bundesweiten gesetzlichen Mindestlohns oder der Privatisierung des Schienenverkehrs und anderem mehr. Der Test basiert auf der Einschätzung der statistischen Signifikanz der beobachteten Übereinstimmung (d.h. wie wahrscheinlich ist eine nur zufällige Übereinstimmung), um die Hypothese von der Repräsentativität der Politik zu akzeptieren oder abzulehnen. Die Studie spielt die Repräsentativität von einzelnen Parteien sowie von Zweier- und Dreier-Koalitionen durch. Darunter ist auch die Konstellation der fünf großen deutschen Parteien und ihrer potentiell möglichen Koalitionen auf der Basis der Bundestagswahl von 2009.
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In: ETUI Working Paper 2010.06
SSRN
Working paper
In: Transfer: the European review of labour and research ; quarterly review of the European Trade Union Institute, Band 15, Heft 3-4, S. 527-556
ISSN: 1996-7284
This article indexes working conditions using data from the Fourth European Working Conditions Survey 2005 for three purposes. (1) Benchmarking countries and social groups. This reveals poor qualification and career opportunities, and modest incomes. Atypical workers have less advantageous working conditions than those in permanent full-time jobs. This shows that Europe is still far from creating 'better jobs' as advocated in the Lisbon agenda. (2) Analysing the flexicurity concept as proposed by the European Commission. Our study disproves the assertion that European workers are less interested in remaining with the same employer but need more flexibility combined with 'upward mobility' and lifelong learning. Moreover, Europe has a shortage of training possibilities and workers demonstrate latent resistance to learning. The basis for the Commission's promotion of flexicurity would thus seem questionable. (3) Proposal of a workplace tax for bad working conditions. As with 'green taxes', the workplace tax would encourage employers to improve working conditions. Indexing individual working conditions with reference to a checklist, as developed in the article, could be a prototype for measuring 'social pollution' to determine the amount of workplace tax.
The paper is an overview of over 30 publications on six models with flexicurity indicators developed at the Hans-Böckler-Foundation for monitoring and analysis of flexicurity. The latter is a new European labour market policy which should compensate the ongoing flexibilization of employment relations (resulting in easy dismissals, adjustable working time, and variable wages) by advances in employment security and social security. Flexibility is promoted by employers, whereas trade unions are concerned with security. The models are aimed at analyzing flexicurity from the following viewpoints: (1) neo-liberal, (2) trade-unionist, (3) of the European welfare state, (4) regarding precarious work, (5) regarding professional training and lifelong learning, and (6) regarding trends in collective agreements. All the six models provide empirical evidence of increasing flexibility together with decline of social security and rise of precarious employment. This is a serious warning against improper implementation of flexicurity and one-sided use of this policy in favor of employers. Finally six policy proposals are made: (1) to introduce flexinsurance, (2) to impose workplace tax, (3) to provide basic income, (4) to constrain financial markets, (5) to politicize and restructuralize trade unions, and (6) separate politics from economy.
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The paper develops a negotiation model for flexicurity-relevant collective bargaining. Flexicurity is a European labour market policy which should compensate the ongoing flexibilization of employment relations by advances in employment security and social security. Flexibility is promoted by employers, whereas trade unions are concerned with security. First, the opposite interests of negotiating sides are expressed by indicators which evaluate flexibility and security aspects of a collective labour agreement (CLA). A fair agreement should have 0-balance, by analogy with credit-debit 0-balance in finances. Since the flexibility and security indices are expressed in different scales ('in different currencies'), the substitution rate ('exchange rate') should be determined. In our case it is done by regression analysis of flexicurity-relevant CLAs from the past practice. The data are taken from the Dutch computer archive of about 5400 CLAs in years 1995 - 2007. For a given CLA, a positive deviation from the flexibility-security 0-balance means that flexibilization issues are well compensated by security measures (better than on the average). A negative deviation means that flexibility prevails over security, implying that trade unions are disadvantaged. The model outputs tables and graphics and can be regarded as a kind of interactive check-list. It shows shortages and advantages of a given collective agreement with several indices, and displays its relative position with regard to all reference CLAs considered, to those of the given year, to those within the branch, or within the branch in the given year. Finally, the total evaluation of the CLA is made in terms of so called flexicurity balance. This approach can be easily extended to issues beyond flexibility and security. Besides pragmatic goals, the study provides empirical evidence of increasing flexibility at the price of security. This is a serious warning against improper implementation of flexicurity and one-sided use of this policy in favor of employers. The computer tool developed is just aimed at enhancing the position of trade unions to the end of surmounting this negative trend.
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In: Transfer: European review of labour and research ; quarterly review of the ETUI Research Department, Band 15, S. 527-556
ISSN: 1024-2589
"In diesem Beitrag wird auf der Grundlage der Daten der vierten Europäischen Erhebung über Arbeitsbedingungen (2005) eine Reihe von Indizes für Arbeitsbedingungen erstellt, die zu dreierlei Zwecken dienen: Erstens wird ein Benchmarking der Länder und sozialen Gruppen vorgenommen. Dabei zeigt sich, dass die Qualifizierungs- und beruflichen Aufstiegsmöglichkeiten gering und die Einkommen bescheiden sind. Für Arbeitnehmer in atypischen Beschäftigungsverhältnissen sind die Arbeitsbedingungen weniger gut als für diejenigen, die eine unbefristete Vollzeitbeschäftigung haben. Dies zeigt, dass Europa noch weit entfernt ist von der Schaffung 'besserer Arbeitsplätze', die von der Lissabon Agenda unterstützt wird. Zweitens wird das von der Europäischen Kommission vorgeschlagene Flexicurity-Konzept analysiert. Unsere Studie widerlegt die Behauptung, dass die europäischen Arbeitnehmer weniger interessiert seien, bei dem gleichen Arbeitgeber zu bleiben, aber mehr Flexibilität benötigen, die mit einer 'Mobilität nach oben' und lebenslangem Lernen kombiniert werden sollte. Darüber hinaus mangelt es in Europa an Ausbildungsmöglichkeiten, und die Arbeitnehmer sind unterschwellig eher widerwillig, zu lernen. Die Grundlage für die Förderung der Flexicurity, wie sie von der Kommission befürwortet wird, erscheint somit fraglich. Drittens wird eine 'Arbeitsplatzsteuer' für schlechte Arbeitsbedingungen vorgeschlagen. Ebenso wie 'grüne Steuern' würde die Arbeitsplatzsteuer die Arbeitgeber ermutigen, die Arbeitsbedingungen zu verbessern. Die Indexierung individueller Arbeitsbedingungen unter Bezugnahme auf eine Checkliste, wie in diesem Beitrag beschrieben, könnte als Prototyp für die Messung der 'sozialen Belastung' dienen, um den Betrag der Arbeitsplatzsteuer zu bestimmen." (Autorenreferat, IAB-Doku)