Conference on Business Crime,Fraud and Corruption Enland,March / April 1991 Preliminary Call for Papers

Conference on Business Crime, Fraud and Corruption Enland, March / April 1991 Preliminary Call for Papers     

The socio-economic impact of the involuntary mass return to Yemen in 1990

800,000 Yemen nationals were forced to leave Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other countries in the region during the Gulf War. Their mass return to Yemen followed immediately after reunification of North and South Yemen. Analysis reveals that the term "migrant worker" is a misnomer and obscures the variations in wealth, residence, and status. Returnees had variable lengths of stay abroad, number of dependents or family members abroad or at home, types of occupation, ownership of assets, frequency of visits to the community of origin, and remittances. The range of long-term migrants included wealthy merchants and bankers, middle level service and retail workers, and poor workers in the informal sector. The common thread is that all suffered some decline in standard of living. The return was less disruptive for short-term migrants. Some long-term residents no longer had social and economic ties to Yemen, and some had no experience living in Yemen. About 33% were estimated to be without ties to home communities. The decline in remittances from abroad affected foreign exchange receipts. The country shifted from labor scarcity to unemployment conditions. The infrastructure in housing, education, and social services was strained. The one-time influx of capital was short-lived. Returnees comprised about 7% of the total population. The feared upheaval politically and economically did not occur. Suggested improvements for future mass resettlement include offering shanty dwellers a supplemental feeding program, a means of obtaining secure housing, and increased infrastructure. The long-term benefits of encouraging a return to agriculture should have been more widely promoted.     

Organized cross-atlantic crime

There is concern about penetration of organized crime in the legitimate business. This penetration can take various forms, ranging from a complete take over to a veritable symbiosis between crime-enterprises and the legitimate industry. This paper describes the interaction between crime-enterprises in the mineral oil market in the Unites States and North-western Europe. It pictures the landscape or moral decay, lack of supervision by law enforcement and the spread of systematic fraud in a branch of industry which has become ripe for infiltration by organized crime. The paper reveals that organized business crime is not just a concern for the United States of Europe alone. If the entrepreneurial landscape has similar features and there are possibilities of personal bridgeheads organized business crime obtains crossborder, transatlantic dimensions. The paper questions the selective attention of law enforcement to easily recognizable crime and the morally dubious attitude of legitimate industry taking advantage of the profitable offers by criminal entrepreneurs.     

Migration as family strategy: Rural-urban labor migration in India during the twentieth century

"The article analyzes the role of families in processes of rural-urban migration in India in the twentieth century. It shows that the continuous circular form of this migration should be explained as a consequence of rural family strategies. Already established kinship relations or marriage opportunities in the future act as a centripetal force, drawing the labor migrants back to their communities time and again. In addition, the article shows how labor migration is informed by economic and cultural considerations which determine the socioeconomic behavior of men and women."     

Stop the music: the current policy and expenditure management system in Ottawa

Abstract. The process of policy and expenditure management in Ottawa is in continual evolution. This paper examines the current system and attempts to draw some conclusions about overall directions of change. The current ‘envelope’ system is a logical outgrowth of attempts dating back at least through the 1970s to better integrate policy initiation and expenditure management considerations. The changing constellations of agencies over that period are examined as is the attempt to impose a higher level of overall coordination on the system. The current interrelationships among central agencies are outlined and some comments are made on the evolving relationships between cabinet and the agencies which support its deliberations. Finally some conclusions are attempted on the basis of the interrelationships among overall planning systems within the federal government. Sommaize: A Ottawa, le processus de gestion des politiques et des dépenses est en évolution continuelle. L'auteur de cet exposé examine le système actuel et essaie de dégager des conclusions quant aw orientations générales de ce processus. Le système actuel de « l'enveloppe » est la suite logique des tentatives, qui remontent au moins aux années 1970, de meilleure intégration en ce qui conceme l'élaboration des politiques et les nouveaux principes de gestion des dépenses. L'auteur examine les changements dans les regroupements d'agences péndant cette periode ainsi que les efforts entrepris pour imposer un plus haut degré de coordination à l'ensemble du système. Il expose les relations actuelles existant au sein des organismes centraux et propose ses commentaires sur l'évolution des rapports entre le Cabinet et les organismes qui aident à ses déliérations. Finalement, I'auteur essaie de tirer certaines conclusions en se basant sur les rapports existant entre les divers systèmes de planification globale au sein du gouvemement fédéral.     

An American Perestroika in Dutch Cities? Urban Policy in the Netherlands at the End of a Millennium

This paper discusses the implications of the recent adoption of interactive forms of governance in Dutch urban policy. Advocates of this new approach claim that interactive governance will have positive effects for (1) the quality of urban democracy and urban governability and (2) for the solution of the information problems inherent in coping with (wicked) urban problems. On the basis of an extensive evaluation of the implementation of the new policies in four of the 25 Dutch municipalities involved, these claims are critically assessed.     

Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations: Coordination Failures and Fiscal Outcomes

This article estimates the fiscal impact of coordination failures in intergovernmental fiscal relations. The coordination failures considered here are due to agency problems arising from the delegation of fiscal powers to sub-national governments, and "common pool" problems associated with funding decentralised government spending through intergovernmental transfers. Particular attention is focused on the trade-off between coordination and fiscal decentralisation. Evidence provided for a sample of thirty countries suggests that coordination failures are likely to result in a deficit bias in decentralized policy making, particularly in the case of developing countries, for which the benefits of decentralization may be over-stressed. Developed countries were found to be less adversely affected by coordination failures and have therefore managed to pursue fiscal consolidation in a decentralized setup.     

The problem of indeterminacy in approval,multiple, and truncated voting systems

It is well known that a plurality election need not reflect the true sentiments of the electorate. Some of the proposed reform procedures, such as approval and cumulative voting, share the characteristics that there are several ways to tally each voter's preferences. Voting systems that permit truncated ballots share this feature. It is shown that the election results for any such procedure can be highly indeterminate; all possible election results can occur with the same choice of sincere voters. This conclusion of indeterminacy holds even when measures of voters' sentiments, such as the existence of a Condorcet winner or even much stronger measures, indicate there is considerable agreement among the voters. Then, multiple systems are compared with all standard tallying procedures. For instance, a corollary asserts it is probable for the plurality voting method to elect the Condorcet winner while approval voting has an indeterminate outcome.The work of both authors was supported, in part, by NSF Grant IST 8415348. This work was partially stimulated by comments concerning the assertions about approval voting and other systems that are discussed in (Saari, 1987). In particular, we are pleased to thank S. Brams, Carl Simon, and the other participants for their questions after one of us presented (Saari, 1987) at the July, 1984, Workshop on Mathematical Models in Political Science held at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.