Do good deeds make bad people?

According to the so-called ‘self-licensing effect’, committing to a virtuous act in a preceding choice may lead to behave less virtuously in the succeeding decision. Consequently, well-intentioned policies can lead to overall counter-productive effects by licensing people to behave badly in related behaviors. On the other side, motivational crowding theory argues that constraining people to adopt a desirable behavior can backfire. We use of a classroom experiment to test whether a regulatory framework to incentivize individuals to adopt pro-environmental behavior generate similar spillovers in terms of licensing effect than a non-regulatory framework. We show that the way the good deed is caused doesn’t seem to influence the licensing effect. Nevertheless, we found that business- and environmental-orientated majors react adversely to the regulatory framework. We show that environmental-orientated students exhibit higher intrinsically motivations than business-orientated ones. Accordingly, we suggest that the licensing effect is more likely to arise when the preceding ‘virtuous’ act is freely chosen (respectively regulatory caused) for non-intrinsically (respectively intrinsically) motivated individuals.     

Does devolution make a difference? Legislative output and policy divergence in Scotland

Devolution provides large scope for Scotland to make its own policy. Primary legislation is one measure of this. Scottish legislation before devolution tended to replicate measures for the rest of the United Kingdom, with differences of style. Scottish legislation in the first four-year term of the Parliament shows a big increase in output. There is an autonomous sphere, in which Scotland has gone its own way without reference to the rest of the UK. In other areas, there is evidence of joint or parallel policy-making, with Scottish legislation meeting the same goals by different means. Finally there is a sphere in which Scottish legislation is essentially the same as that in England and Wales. Sewel motions have not been used to impose policy uniformity on Scotland. There is evidence that devolution has shifted influence both vertically, between the UK and Scottish levels, and horizontally, within a Scottish legislative system that has been opened up.     

How Do Fictions Construe Our Laws for Us?

This paper on van Schooten’s book starts from the observation that citizens untrained in the law are yet able to live by the law, while not being part of the established interpretive community. They manage to live with fictions. Neither the discredited flow model of legal communication rejected by Van Schooten nor her own semiotic and institutional alternative theory manages to deal with this phenomenon in an adequate way. We can learn from Plato’s discussion with Crito in which the laws were imagined as speaking beings that there is a long philosophical tradition according to which laws are imagined to speak to us (while everybody knows otherwise). Working with this legal fiction in our own democratic societies requires an analysis of the way fictions construe our laws for us. Five of these fictions are then briefly mentioned: perfect or at least adequate legal knowledge; legislative intention; instrumental reason; the General Interest; and the rule of measures, not of men.     

Horses or unicorns: can paying for performance make quality competition routine?

The competitive benefits of pay-for-performance (P4P) financial incentives are widely assumed. These incentives can affect health care through several mechanisms, however, not all of which involve competition. This insight has three implications. First, federal antitrust enforcement should continue to scrutinize P4P arrangements. Second, government needs to play a larger role in P4P than through antitrust oversight. Third, widespread enthusiasm for a particular health policy reform does not relieve policy makers of the obligation to understand its theoretical basis.     

Redressing the imbalanced political market for health policy: a role for the state attorney general?

In current discussions of "procompetitive" approaches to health policy, the enforcement of antitrust laws in health care markets is a strategy that has attracted increasing attention: the filing of consumer-oriented health suits provides a means to "redress" the typically imbalanced "political market" in health policy. This study examines an important aspect of the antitrust enforcement process, the decision by a state attorney general to undertake an aggressive antitrust enforcement program in the health area. Three variables were found to explain this decision: the political needs of a "politician-supplier," the organizational resources of a strategic institutional position, and the availability of a relatively favorable policy arena. An assessment of the future role of state attorneys general in this area suggests that their health antitrust initiatives will increase, but that various political and resource constraints are likely to inhibit their aggressiveness in pursuing these actions.     

Is foreign direct investment good for the poor? New evidence from African countries

This paper conducts an empirical investigation of the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and poverty in selected African economies. Using system generalised method of moments, our findings showed that FDI inflows have significantly contributed to poverty reduction in African countries. Our results also showed that better institutional quality and human capital development are associated with reducing poverty. Furthermore, interacting FDI with financial development was found to significantly reduce poverty, thus providing support to the hypothesis that better functioning financial systems enhance the efficiency of FDI in reducing poverty.     

Governance and community benefit: are nonprofit hospitals good candidates for Sarbanes-Oxley type reforms?

Recent investigations into the activities of nonprofit hospitals have pointed to weak or lax governance on the part of some of these organizations. As a result of these events, various federal and state initiatives are now either under way or under discussion to strengthen the governance of hospitals and other nonprofit corporations through mandatory board structures and practices. However, despite policy makers' growing interest in these types of governance reforms, there is in fact little empirical evidence to support their contribution to the effectiveness of hospital boards. The purpose of this article is to report the results of a study examining the relationship between the structure and practices of nonprofit hospital boards relative to the hospital's provision of community benefits. Our results point to modest relationships between these sets of variables, suggesting considerable limitations to what federal and state policy makers can accomplish through legislative initiatives to improve the governance of nonprofit hospitals.     

European educational policy on shifting sand?

European integration makes educational policy even more important, especially as an instrument to forge the future of Europe. This growing consciousness is a motivation to critically analyse and compare the educational policies of the countries of the European Union. This investigation is only realistic on condition that the research objectives are clearly set out. Therefore, the following questions guide the article: 1. Concerning the ‘facts’: – Can the history of European educational policies provide us with a taxonomy to distinguish ‘types’ of educational policy? – What are the main changes concerning both structures and role conceptions in the field of educational policy? – Is educational policy autonomous or is this policy influenced by other leading sub-systems? – What is the impact of supra-national organisations on educational policies? – Are educational policies in the EU visibly influenced by (new?) underlying ‘ideologies’? – What are the main current policy issues in the EU-countries? 2. Concerning the ‘trends’: Is it possible to deduce certain ‘trends’ from the comparative analysis of the mentioned ‘facts’? 3. Concerning the ‘critical analysis’: – Does the literature on educational policy analysis provide us with ‘critical interpretation schemes’? – What will the outcome be if the discovered ‘facts’ and ‘trends’ are confronted with such-like schemes? The article concludes with some critical recommendations concerning the future of educational policy in the EU.