nature reserves as a bioeconomic management tool a simplified modelling approach this paper demonstrates analytically how a nature reserve may protect the total population realize maximum sustainable yield msy and economic yield ey and how this depends on biological growth migration reserve size and economic parameters the pre reserve population is assumed to follow the logistic growth law and two post reserve growth models are discussed to explore the importance of model assumptions for assessment of reserves the post reserve growth has either a common carrying capacity as in the pre reserve case or each sub population has its own carrying capacity proportionate to its distribution area a combined model as a continuum of the two models is also formulated and briefly discussed population protection against extinction is assured against low cost harvesting including zero cost when relative reserve size is greater than relative migration reserve size may be tuned to realize msy in one model but not in the other economic yield is generally greater in the former but maximum ey cannot be realized in any one

the politics of conflict and consent abstract transaction cost economics claims to model the labor contract in terms of the opportunism practised by workers a recent alternative has seen custom as the main means by which workers impose their control of the contract both fail to explore workers co operative behavior in the workplace pay insufficient attention to managerial behavior and misunderstand the social organization of conflict and consent materials from industrial sociology and labor history are used to illustrate these limitations to show how the labor contract is in fact negotiated and to suggest how an alternative approach might be constructed

buying supermajorities in finite legislatures i analyze the finite voter version of the groseclose and snyder vote buying model i identify how the optimal coalition size varies with the underlying preference parameters derive necessary and sufficient conditions for minimal ma1onty and universal coalitions to form and show that the necessary condition for minimal majorities found in groseclose and snyder is incorrect

vote buying supermajorities and flooded coalitions in a recent paper banks 2000 adopting the framework of our model groseclose and snyder 1996 derives several new and noteworthy results in addition he provides a counterexample to our proposition 4 here we explain the error in our proposition but note that we can correct it easily if we invoke an additional assumption in equilibrium the winning vote buyer constructs a nonflooded coalition that is she does not bribe every member of her coalition we conclude with a brief discussion of the substantive implications of banks s proposition 1 we note that it provides additional support for our general claim that minimal winning coalitions should be rare in a vote buying game

the value of marriage to family firms this paper presents the first empirical evidence showing that the marriage of a member of the controlling family adds value to public corporations the results based on a uniquely comprehensive data set from thailand show that the family firm s stock price increases when the partner is from either a prominent business or a political family abnormal returns tend to be higher for firms whose operation depends on extensive networks in contrast marriages to ordinary citizens are not associated with any abnormal returns these findings are generally supportive of the value of networks in general and marriage in particular

a carrot and stick approach to agenda setting this paper models a legislature in which the same agenda setter serves for two periods showing how he can exploit a legislature completely in the first period by promising future benefits to legislators who support him in equilibrium a large majority of legislators vote for the first period proposal because they thereby maintain the chance of belonging to the minimum winning coalition in the future legislators may therefore approve policies by large majorities or even unanimously that benefit few or even none of them the results are robust but institutional arrangements such as entitlements can reduce the agenda setter s power by reducing his discretion to reward and punish legislators and rules such as sequential voting can increase a legislator s ability to resist exploitation

bargaining in legislatures bargaining in legislatures is conducted according to formal rules specifying who may make proposals and how they will be decided legislative outcomes depend on those rules and on the structure of the legislature although the social choice literature provides theories about voting equilibria it does not endogenize the formation of the agenda on which the voting is based and rarely takes into account the institutional structure found in legislatures in our theory members of the legislature act noncooperatively in choosing strategies to serve their own districts explicitly taking into account the strategies members adopt in response to the sequential nature of proposal making and voting the model permits the characterization of a legislative equilibrium reflecting the structure of the legislature and also allows consideration of the choice of elements of that structure in a context in which the standard institution free model of social choice theory yields no equilibrium

the function of authority in transaction cost economics abstract this paper questions the transaction cost characterization of observed authority relations as efficient governance structures various inadequacies in the transaction cost account of work organization and the limits of firm size are traced to its neglect of the possibility that authority may be abused opportunistically this exemplifies a more general propensity in the transaction cost literature that of explaining economic organization in functionalist terms with little attention to the causal mechanisms through which efficient governance structures might actually arise three such mechanisms are considered but none is found to provide an adequate rationale for the imputation of efficiency to observed structures

employee ownership and internal governance abstract this paper is designed to counter oliver williamson s hypothetical peer group model of organization with a discussion of three prosperous populations of employee owned firms worked owned scavenger companies taxi cooperatives and professional partnerships such as the large law firm it will be shown here that these firms are formed endure and prevail over their competition for reasons that williamson more than anyone else has taught us to appreciate in particular this paper will argue that the metering problems and human asset considerations that are so prominently featured in williamson s work are crucial for understanding the success of these firms

anti williamson a marxian critique of new institutional economics new institutional economics explains capitalist institutions by means of neoclassical tools this method consists of introducing non market institutions as solutions to market failures the explicit or implicit assumption is that in the beginning there were markets in this paper we criticise this conception inherited from neoclassical economics by focusing on williamson s theory first we discuss williamson s speculative method which idealises the market and presents it as natural and universal we then suggest that williamson s categories his method and conception are themselves products of bourgeois ideology in this sense we conclude williamson himself is ultimately an institution of capitalism

power brokers middlemen in legislative bargaining abstract we study a model of decentralized legislative bargaining over public decisions with transfers we establish the emergence of middlemen in legislative bargaining as a robust equilibrium phenomenon we show that legislative intermediation can impact policy outcomes and can be inefficient to fulfill this role the middleman s policy preferences and bargaining position must be such that its role of intermediary is credible but the political middleman must also directly benefit from policy change the results highlight fundamental differences between the role of intermediaries in politics and exchange economies

transaction cost economics the comparative contracting perspective abstract gregory dow s assessment of transaction cost economics is both thoughtful and provocative although we agree on many matters these remarks focus on our differences i begin with a brief sketch of the framework out of which transaction cost economics operates i then examine the purported bias of transaction cost economics in favor of capital managed as against labor managed firms and my alleged failure to deal with downward opportunism dow s claim that transaction cost economics is given to functionalist excesses is considered next concluding remarks follow

universalism and the value of political power although legislatures typically use majority rule to allocate a budget in distributive legislation unanimous consent over the broad allocation of benefits is pervasive i develop a game theoretic model where members strategically interact in a universal coalition to determine allocations with noncooperative bargaining as a threat point for the breakdown of cooperation to quantify the effects of political power on the agreed upon allocation i structurally estimate the model using the bridge bill capital budget in 1992 i find that 16 73 of the budget would be allocated differently if allocations were determined only based on actual needs

economic impacts of marine reserves the importance of spatial behavior abstract marine biologists have shown virtually unqualified support for managing fisheries with marine reserves signifying a new resource management paradigm that recognizes the importance of spatial processes in exploited systems most modeling of reserves employs simplifying assumptions about the behavior of fishermen in response to spatial closures we show that a realistic depiction of fishermen behavior dramatically alters the conclusions about reserves we develop estimate and calibrate an integrated bioeconomic model of the sea urchin fishery in northern california and use it to simulate reserve policies our behavioral model shows how economic incentives determine both participation and location choices of fishermen we compare simulations with behavioral response to biological modeling that presumes that effort is spatially uniform and unresponsive to economic incentives we demonstrate that optimistic conclusions about reserves may be an artifact of simplifying assumptions that ignore economic behavior

competitive lobbying and supermajorities in a majority rule institution this paper presents a complete information model of competitive lobbying in a majority rule institution where lobbying consists of providing politically valuable resources to legislators legislators have three roles first they act as allies or opponents in deciding whether to consider a lobbyist s offer second they act as agenda setters in deciding whether to bring a policy alternative to a vote third they vote on the agenda the stationary equilibria include minimal majorities and supermajorities and involve unilateral counteractive and preemptive lobbying supermajorities are recruited either to influence agenda formation or to preempt the opposing lobbyist

new concepts and trends in international r d organization abstract the globalization of markets the regionalization of technical and scientific expertise and the rapid change in technologies are forcing technology based companies to continuously adjust their r d organization our study of 33 companies reveals five different types of r d organization in multinational companies mnc we classified r d organizations according to the dispersion of r d activities and the degree of cooperation between individual r d units and identified the ethnocentric centralized the geocentric centralized the polycentric decentralized the r d hub and the integrated r d network organization five trends of organizational change among these forms of international r d organization were identified 1 stronger orientation of r d activities towards international markets and knowledge centers 2 establishment of tightly coordinated listening posts 3 strengthening and reinforcement of foreign r d sites 4 increased integration of decentralized r d units and 5 tighter coordination and recentralization of r d activities at fewer know how centers the search for the optimal balance between coordination and control is reflected by hybrid structures and intermediary configurations detected in some of the investigated companies since effective changes in behavioral orientation require considerable time successful quantum leaps in multinational r d organization are next to impossible

interest group size and legislative lobbying abstract we develop a model of legislative decision making in which lobbying and public policy are jointly determined we examine how policy outcomes depend on the sizes of the interest groups while a larger size typically involves favorable effects on policy we also identify threshold levels of interest group size where a lobby will be harmed if it becomes larger this may provide another rationale as to why some interests do not or not fully organize spending limits can remove adverse policy effects of interest group size however this is not necessarily welfare improving moreover we find that endogenous proposal making may turn a second mover advantage in standard legislative lobbying models into a second mover disadvantage

does hierarchical governance facilitate adaptation to changed circumstances abstract the transaction cost theory of economic organization maintains that by merging and adopting a hierarchical governance structure two firms can circumvent the bargaining problem which would impede adaptation to changing circumstances if they remained independent i analyze this claim in a simple model which allows the costs of hierarchical organization imperfect selective intervention to be evaluated alongside the costs due to the bargaining problem delays and disagreement both costs are due to informational asymmetries which are assumed to be unaffected by the choice of governance structure examples are presented which support the fundamental transaction cost proposition that hierarchical governance is preferred when parties are highly interspecific and there are significant gaps in the contract the intuition is that rational bargainers make less attractive offers in precisely those circumstances where adaptation is likely to be extremely valuable integration effectively separates the decision to adapt from the division of the resulting surplus and so is relatively efficient when substantial quasi rents are at stake

cooperation and punishment under repeated majority voting in light of the extensive theoretical evidence suggesting absence of equilibrium in voting models tullock 1981 asks why so much stability our results suggest the following answer political agents engaged in long term relationships can sustain highly stable allocations if there are strongly held norms for punishment of defectors 1

sequential legislative lobbying under political certainty in this paper we analyse the equilibrium of a sequential game theoretical model of lobbying based on groseclose and snyder 1996 describing a legislature that votes on two alternatives and two opposing lobbies lobby 0 and lobby 1 that compete by bidding for legislators votes in this model there is a strong second mover advantage

on the political origin of corporate governance species although economies business practices and living standards have converged since wwii corporate structures continue to differ among the advanced economies of the world looking at the diversity of corporate structures of large sized firms around the world and over time would fascinate charles darwin this work develops a critical review of the literature on political determinants of corporate governance through the darwinian theory including some lamarckian aspects as darwin in his work on the origin of species explicates the diversity of species of tortoises finches and iguanas of the galapagos islands so darwinism may contribute in understanding the origin and the persistence of corporate diversity in particular this article takes into account politics driven variations their inheritances and the subsequent selection of advantageous corporate attributes

is the firm an individual this paper shows how three new institutionalist theories try but ultimately fail to support the firm as individual thesis first marx hart s idea of property rights and coase williamson s notion of transaction costs are insufficient to substantiate the market firm dichotomy second hayek s constructionist view presents the firm as opposed to the market as a designed order no different from artifacts such as tables and cars third vanberg s constitutionalist theory also fails to support the firm as individual thesis the paper suggests that the consented goal notion is a fruitful ground upon which to build the firm as individual thesis

the political economy of wildlife exploitation in this paper we analyze the exploitation of wildlife in a third world context in the model there are two agents an agency managing a habitat area of fixed size and a group of peasants the agency managing the habitat area has the legal right to exploit the wildlife while the local people hunt illegally introducing the concept of relative harvesting dominance we demonstrate that the stock utilization depends crucially on the prevailing economic and ecological conditions it is also shown that the existing property rights regime appears in different forms depending on these conditions

intra firm trade abstract the study analyses intra firm trade that is the estimated one third of world trade which is transacted between affiliated parties as firms realize the increasing potential for integrating their operations throughout the world they are contributing to significant shifts in the patterns of interntional trade and industrial development as emphasized here international trade is inextricably linked to the growing and substantial share of transactions between affiliated parties conveyed through multinational enterprises

a metapopulation model with private property and a common pool abstract a metapopulation illustrated by barnacles has a spatial distribution and a two stage life cycle in the model developed here space limits expansion introducing a profitable harvest activity of adults leads to harvest at only one site a solution driven by biological increasing returns the model is of interdisciplinary interest because the natural resource has common property characteristics in its larval stage but a private property character in its adult stage the model permits economic valuation of lost habitat

a noncooperative theory of legislative coalitions this noncooperative theory is based on a model that incorporates an institutional structure that reflects the sequential process of agenda formation and voting in a legislature that has the task of allocating particularistic benefits among legislative districts the theory is intended to identify the incentives for the formation of proposal coordinating coalitions as a function of characteristics of the political system and the rules that govern agenda formation coalition proposals allocate all the benefits to their districts and whenever the coalition has discipline or controls the chair it will be of minimal winning size when proposals are governed by a closed rule when coalition discipline is absent and the chair is neutral the coalition will be comprised of approximately 70 of the legislature a legislative rule that allows amendments may result in larger coalitions coalition composition is also considered