A survey of micro-enterprise in urban West Africa: drivers shaping the sector

This article identifies some key factors shaping the micro-enterprise sector in urban French West Africa. Drawing on interviews with micro-entrepreneurs and micro-finance practitioners in Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Togo, the study explores the needs, characteristics, motivations, and success factors for micro-entrepreneurship in the region, together with some of the impediments to the growth and success of micro-enterprise ventures. It was found that those operating micro-enterprises in the informal economy are entrepreneurs principally by necessity, and that their most basic needs tend to drive their business activities and behaviours. It was also observed that their success was constrained by a number of barriers, including poor access to capital, poor training, and general aversion to risk. As a result, the development of the micro-enterprise sector in urban French West Africa has been sub-optimal, and the authors conclude that this situation may persist unless broader economic and social barriers are addressed.     

Factors affecting the transfer of technology from industry/university cooperatives to sponsoring companies

This paper illuminates the technology-transfer process by identifying the factors affecting the implementation decisions of sponsor companies with regard to eight projects conducted at two industry/university cooperative-research centers. Telephone interviews with corporate-sponsor representatives provided the data. The factors reported most often as influential in the decision of whether or not to use research results were relevance of the project, researcher's ability to demonstrate the usefulness of the results, and the quality of communication with the researcher. When results were not used, lack of company support and lack of communication within the company also appeared to be influential. The end result of these analyses is a model depicting the factors that affect the implementation decision.     

Client Games: Defense Attorney Perspectives on Their Relations with Criminal Clients

In this study, relations between criminal defense lawyers and their clients are explored from the attorneys'perspective using interviews with 155 defense counsel from nine felony trial courts. Attorneys claim public clients are more skeptical and less willing to accept their professional authority than private clients and that they need to take extra steps to gain their cooperation. The accountability of attorneys is investigated in relationship to the need to establish "client control. " This problem is resolved through a gamelike situation leading to the apparent paradox that attorneys share decision-making power with public clients contrary to their expectations.     

City Finances and the National Economy

City governments were better prepared to face the 1990–1992recession than were state governments, and they adjusted theirbudgets with relatively less fanfare. The absence of widespreadbankruptcy notwithstanding, the fiscal position of cities hasdeterioratedandsome ofthe necessary adjustments were painful.Services were reduced as real per capita expenditure growthdeclined, taxes were increased, and the entire local governmentsector remained in deficit during the past six years. The problemhas not been softened by federal or state policies; in fact,the flow of both federal and state aid slowed markedly duringthe late 1980s. A combination of economic and social forcessuggests that many of the nation's older cities will not outgrowthis fiscal stress and their budgetary well-being will be moredependent on state and federal policies.     

Federal Budgeting and Finance in 1991: The Future is Now

The large federal deficits run throughout the 1980s generated concern that we were mortgaging our future. In 1991, the note came due. The potential for aggravating the long-run deficit problem constrained fiscal policy from reacting to the recession. Institutional and partisan conflict and the controls established by the Budget Enforcement Act (BEA) limited responses to a remarkable budgetary opportunity—the dissolution of the Soviet Union—and to a serious budgetary threat—exploding health care costs. The BEA controls were applied rigidly with a few minor exceptions, and credit reform was implemented successfully; on the other hand, Congress and the president made no headway on further deficit reductions even though long-run projections worsened. The agenda-setting role of the president's budget for the fiscal year 1993 diminished, as the document's format was heavily influenced by the upcoming presidential election. In contrast to this mixed record for federal budgeting, progress was made in building a financial management structure and developing accounting standards.     

Rules and games

This paper reconsiders the relationship between the rules of a game and its outcomes. We develop a notion of rule reform that leads to the selection of Pareto improved equilibria points. We then apply this notion to a series of naturally occurring fishing rules, including examples from Malaysia, India, Brazil, Turkey, and Canada. We show that reforming a game is conceptually akin to reforming an economy.     

Interests groups in Parliament: Exploring MPs’ interest affiliations (2000‐2011)

This research note presents an innovative dataset of Swiss MPs’ interest ties between 2000‐2011. The longitudinal analysis shows that the average number of interest ties per MP has more than doubled: from 3.5 in 2000 to 7.6 in 2011. Since the mid‐2000s, public interest groups have accounted for approximately one out of two ties between MPs and interest groups, showing the strongest increase during the period. However, when looking at the most present individual groups, important business groups dominate and appear well connected with the governmental parties of the political right. Finally, interest groups are also able to forge themselves a strategic presence within the parliamentary committees that are the most relevant for their policy issues. Next research steps include the assessment of the (un)biased access of interest groups to the parliamentary venue and their policy influence.