Suchergebnisse

Enth. 5 Beitr. Locating economic concentration / Jeroen Hinloopen and Charles van Marrewijk -- Transport costs, location and the economy / Jan Osterhaven and Piet Rietveld -- Agglomerations in equilibrium? / Jan G. Lambooy and Frank G. van Oort -- Policy competition in theory and practice / Ruud A. Mooij, Joeri Gorter and Richard Nahuis -- Clustering, optimum currency areas and macroeconomic policy / Roel Beetsma and Koen Vermeylen

The period under review (January 2010 – June 2012) has been a time of consolidation (or exhaustion) for the Union generally, as the Lisbon changes are allowed to bed in. The competition sphere is no exception. There has been limited initiative, certainly nothing ambitious to come out of the Commission over the period. At the same time a new Commission took up office—three months late, and by a little-remarked constitutional sleight of hand1—in 2010, and with it came a new Commissioner for Competition (Mr Almunia) and with him a new Director-General of DG Competition (Mr Italianer—Dutch notwithstanding the name), which event sometimes, but not always, marks a reorientation of Union competition policy. Both are economists which, again, may or may not influence the direction of policy. At the same time the Union has been buffeted by a financial crisis not wholly of its own making in which the competition rules must have a significant role to play.

Warlords compete for turf that provides them with rents and `taxable' resources, but they can also offer a semblance of security within their respective territories. This article first examines two economic models of warlord competition. Because such competition takes place through the use of force or the threat of the use of force, more competition typically leads to lower material welfare as resources are wasted on unproductive arming and fighting. This is in contrast to ordinary economic models, in which typically greater competition leads to higher material welfare. Furthermore, rents from oil, diamonds, and even foreign aid crowd out production. In extreme cases, this crowding out of ordinary production can be complete, whereby all economic resources can be devoted to the unproductive competition for rents. The article then reviews factors that lead either to actual war or to peace in the shadow of war. Because war is destructive, human beings are typically risk averse, and there exist numerous complementarities in production and consumption, we can expect peace in the shadow of war to be most often preferable by all parties. Actual war can take place because of incomplete information about the preferences and capabilities of the adversaries but also, somewhat surprisingly, when the shadow of the future is sufficiently long.

THE AUTHOR REFLECTS ON THE SCHOLARSHIP OF NORMAN SCHOFIELD, FOCUSING ON "POLITICAL COMPETITION AND MULTIPARTY COALITION GOVERNMENTS." IN THIS ESSAY, SCHOFIELD OFFERED A COMPETITIVE TWO-DIMENSIONAL MODEL OF MULTIPARTY COALITION BEHAVIOR.

"Der Vortrag bemüht sich um einen soziologischen Beitrag zur gegenwärtigen Debatte um den Sozial- und Wirtschaftsstandort Deutschland. Die rein kostenorientierte Sichtweise, die auf hohe Sozial- und Lohnkosten abstellt, wird um eine Perspektive ergänzt, die in der vergleichenden Sozial-Ökonomie zunehmend Aufmerksamkeit genießt: die These, daß soziales Kapital eine wichtige Grundlage ökonomischer Wettbewerbsfähigkeit ist. Diese These wird in vier Schritten zur Diskussion gestellt: Zunächst wird das Konzept des sozialen Kapitals vorgestellt. Sodann wird die These seines Zusammenhanges mit der wirtschaftlichen Leistungsfähigkeit mittels einiger empirischer Untersuchungen erläutert. In einem dritten Abschnitt soll gezeigt werden, daß die Bundesrepublik in diesem Bereich vergleichsweise gut dasteht. Im Schlußabschnitt schließlich sollen einerseits einige Konsequenzen aus diesem Befund für die Standortdiskussion und andererseits einige offene Fragen einer sozio-ökonomischen Erklärung ökonomischer Performanz erörtert werden." (Autorenreferat)

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1. Political Competition over a Single Issue: The Case of Certainty -- 2. Modeling Party Uncertainty -- 3. Unidimensional Policy Spaces with Uncertainty -- 4. Applications of the Wittman Model -- 5. Endogenous Parties: The Unidimensional Case -- 6. Political Competition over Several Issues: The Case of Certainty -- 7. Multidimensional Issue Spaces and Uncertainty: The Downs Model -- 8. Party Factions and Nash Equilibrium -- 9. The Democratic Political Economy of Progressive Taxation -- 10.Why the Poor Do Not Expropriate the Rich in Democracies -- 11. Distributive Class Politics and the Political Geography of Interwar Europe -- 12. A Three-Class Model of American Politics -- 13. Endogenous Parties with Multidimensional Competition -- 14. Toward a Model of Coalition Government -- Mathematical Appendix -- References -- Index

Analyzes costs and benefits of involving more than one firm in a contract for development and production of weapon systems.

James McKinnon, the Director General of Gas Supply, outlines the regulation of the gas industry and suggests that competition, actual and surrogate, has an important role despite the privatisation of the industry as a single corporation.