A note on collusion and resale price maintenance

This paper advances a new, anti-collusive, explanation of resale price maintenance. By imposing a price floor, an upstream firm increases the non-cooperative profits of downstream firms and makes collusion relatively less profitable. As a result, collusion may be destabilized and the price floor enables a manufacturer to prevent collusive behavior among downstream firms. This finding contrasts with the popular view that resale price maintenance fosters collusion.     

Postretrenchment Politics: Policy Feedback in Chile's Health and Pension Reforms

Through a comparison of three periods of health and pension reform in Chile, this article develops an explanation for the incremental form of social policy change that some Latin American nations have witnessed in recent years, despite the dramatic rise of left governments. It describes “postretrenchment politics,” which constitutes a realignment in the way politics plays out in countries that have undergone social policy retrenchment. In postretrenchment politics, the strengthened position of private business interests, combined with political learning legacies and lock‐in effects generated by reforms, results in incremental political change, despite renewed efforts by left parties to address inequality. Global capital also plays an important contextual role, and may influence postretrenchment politics. In postretrenchment politics, newly reformed systems may achieve greater equity, but they do so in fragmented form.     

A Resurgent Presidency? Portuguese Semi-Presidentialism and the 2016 Elections

This article analyses the Portuguese presidential elections of January 2016, setting these within the backdrop of recent semi-presidential practice in Portugal. The election took place in the context of an apparent hollowing of the presidency, a pattern that potentially reflects the bailout that marked most of the second term of the outgoing president, Cavaco Silva. This pattern also helps explain the second-order nature of this presidential election. Despite potentially being an ‘open’ election – in that the incumbent had reached term limits – the election was characterised by low citizen mobilisation, low partisan involvement and low competitiveness. The initial two months of the newly elected president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, suggests he is seeking to invert this hollowing pattern by mobilising popular support behind the presidency.     

Evaluating Others If They Stand Up for Their Moral Convictions,and Evaluating Ourselves If We Don't Stand Up

Social Justice Research - Acting on one’s moral principles is not always easy. Upholding one’s moral beliefs may run counter to one’s social environment or situational demands. It...     

The multiple faces of the entrepreneurial university: a review of the prevailing theoretical approaches

The Journal of Technology Transfer - The importance and the definition of an entrepreneurial university (EU), together with the factors that lead to its existence, have been widely discussed in the...     

Legislative Transparency and Credit Risk

Open governance requirements are designed to improve accountability, which implies that transparent governments are more trustworthy stewards of their publicly invested power. However, transparency may also reduce institutional effectiveness and inhibit political compromise, diminishing the capacity to manage resources responsibly. We assess empirical support for these competing perspectives in the context of American state legislatures, many of which have become exempt from state sunshine laws in recent decades. We leverage variation in the timing of these legislative exemptions to identify the effect of removing transparency in a crucial governing institution on investors’ risk perceptions of states’ general obligation bonds. Our analysis of these data during the period 1995–2010 suggests that removing legislative transparency reduces state credit risk. We conclude that while openness in government may be normatively desirable, shielding legislative proceedings from public view may actually be better for states’ debt repayment capacity, improving their overall fiscal health.