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Containing Contagious Financial Crises: The Political Economy of Joint Intervention into the Asian Crisis

The notion of contagion has changed the wayscientists perceive financial crises,causing heated debate on the politicaleconomy of crisis intervention. Based on aformal model that shows how a financialcrisis can escalate and spread contagiously,this article analyzes game-theoreticallyhow a financial market crisis can becontained through intervention. The centralfocus is the role that internationalorganizations play in overcoming thecollective action problem of jointintervention. It is argued that the IMFsupport programs were helpful, and probablynecessary in a class of cases we analyzemore carefully, in surpassing the thresholdlevel of collective action.     

Die drei Welten der sozialen Ungleichheit: Belohnungen,Prestige und Citizenship

Talcott Parsons’s contribution to an analysis of social inequality seems to have had a strange destiny: it was either neglected as if Parsons had not contributed to the problem at all; or it was rejected as an allegedly useless kind of functional analysis of social stratification of modern societies. However, I argue, there is no single theory of functional stratification. Rather, there are at least three versions that have to be seen as separate approaches: First, the theory of rewards as it was developed by Parsons and, more important, by Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore; second, the theory of moral respect, that Parsons presented in two different versions; third, the theory of a balance of equality and inequality in modern societies that Parsons developed following T.H. Marshall’s theory of citizenship. The article presents a historic and systematic analysis of these three strands of Parsons’s contribution to the debate on social inequality. While the theory of functional stratification failed as a whole, I show that Parsons nevertheless anticipated crucial aspects of recent sociological debates, like the importance of the vagueness and fluidity of social stratification, or the crucial significance of education being the most important resource for a realization of individual life chances in modern societies.     

Werbung und Unternehmensberatung als „:Treuhänder“: expressiver Werte?

This paper discusses the contribution of Parsons’s theory of professions that focuses on the specific modern relationship between value commitment and rationality to the analysis of the field of advertising and (management) consulting occupations, both being considered to be a new type of professions (named economic communicators of culture). However, there are some differences between the classical professions and these new occupational groups. One main difference is the significance of expressivity: advertisers are concerned with expressive functions of consumerism while consultants are implementing values of self-realization and individualism in the work sphere. Therefore, we refer to both, Parsons’s category of expressive culture and to his theory of symbolic media of interchange where he developed the idea that value-commitments are no longer anchored (internalized) in personality structures and institutionalized in occupational roles, but “circulating”. This idea stresses the role of reputation as a source of professional influence and recognition. The connection of these three elements of Parsons’s theory (professions, expressive culture, symbolic media) will contribute to a better understanding of the significance of these new occupational groups, the economic communicators of culture.     

The proximity and the directional theories of issue voting: Comparative results for the USA and Germany

Abstract In several recent studies George Rabinowitz and his co–authors challenge the 'classical' spatial model of issue voting, the proximity model, by introducing a directional model. In this article we examine whether different measurement of perceived issue positions of candidates or parties leads to diverging judgments about the predictive power of the directional model (which is claimed to be empirically superior), as compared to the proximity model, using data from the USA and Germany. The results demonstrate that the measurement preferred by Rabinowitz et al. tends to bias empirical findings in favour of directional theory. If we use a more plausible operational definition of issue positions of candidates and parties the directional model in both countries fails to turn out superior.     

State and standards

In this paper a new economic approach to standardization has been presented. Standardization has been regarded as a problem ofgradual choice. An individual chooses to apply more or less standards within a hierarchy of standards. With this decomposition of standards, the problem of strategic market power becomes less important than in the traditional models of standardization. It becomes possible to analyze the problems of network externalities within a framework of non-strategic behavior and to apply the tools of the traditional theory of externalities and public goods. While decentralized action may lead to too little standardization, committees may overcome this deficiency to some extent, but bureaucracies are likely to lead to overstandardization. In the empirical section of the paper it has been shown that our approach can be applied to the standard-setting process in languages, railroads, and telecommunications. In all three cases the tendency of bureaucracies to generate more standardization than committees has been corroborated.The authors are indebted for helpful comments to the participants of the Berlin Seminar on Political Economy and of the colloquium Algemene Economie, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, and to A. Roemer, Saarbrücken.