The 2008 Financial Crisis and the Flying Geese Model

In the twentieth century Japan embarked on an economic developmental path that came to be known as the Flying Geese Model. The geopolitical milieu after the Second World War provided Japan with favourable conditions for rapid economic growth and industrialization. By the 1950s, many had noticed the success of the model and it was subsequently adopted by other East Asian countries. They too enjoyed decades of remarkable economic growth. An important element of the model is growth driven by export to the USA and Europe. As a result of the 2008 financial crisis, the traditional markets of the geese are shrinking. The new situation poses grave challenges to both the existing flying geese economies and latecomer economies which wish to follow the model. East Asian countries are responding to the situation by broadening and deepening their existing economic linkages and developing new ones. This represents a continuation of East Asian regionalism in the wake of the 1997 financial crisis.     

Family-owned,limited close corporations and protection of ownership

Protected ownership and freedom of contracts are two basic parts of the institutional framework of successful countries according to Douglass North, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1993. The incentives to make long-term investments are strengthened if ownership rights are protected and freedom of contracts is a basic element in the process of efficient allocation of scarce resources. An important engine in prosperous societies is the family firm. Most companies in these societies can be classified as family firms and a major part of GDP is produced by family businesses. Consequently, how ownership is protected in family firms is an important issue.Three important factors of private ownership of property are the rights to determine use of owned assets, the return generated from them and to transfer the assets at mutually agreeable terms to a new owner(s).The incentives of a founder entrepreneur to put efforts into the establishment of a firm are determined by all the three factors. We will here pay special attention to the third factor, transfer of the ownership of the firm. The founder often places contractual restrictions on such transfers to ensure that the structure of ownership is stable and that the firm stays in the family. The possibility to do so is part of the freedom of contracts and is associated with the extent of ownership held as well as the incentives to invest in new businesses.This paper is primarily about how protection of family ownership can be achieved from a legal point of view and discusses the reasons to enforce these legal relationships in the future for second, third, fourth etc. generations of family owners.     

A Longitudinal Study of Modifying Influences in the Relationship Between Domestic Violence and Child Maltreatment

The increased risk of child maltreatment in the presence of domestic violence is well documented, but much remains unknown about factors that modify this relationship. This study investigates the roles of risk and protective factors in the relationship between domestic violence and being reported to the Department of Social Services for child maltreatment. Consistent with the literature, we find a significant overlap between domestic violence and maltreatment. Young maternal age, low education, low income, and lack of involvement in a religious community add to the risk for maltreatment associated with domestic violence. Separation between the maternal caregiver and her partner significantly reduces the risk for maltreatment when domestic violence is reported. A significant reduction in the risk for maltreatment is also found with higher levels of support from the maternal caregiver reported by the child in the context of domestic violence.     

Innovative regulations,incomplete contracts and ownership structure in the water utilities

Using an incomplete contract framework, we analyse new forms of regulation and private participation in public services. This paper explains contractual efficiency in the absence of financially guaranteed investments in public private partnerships. The example of a number of African countries underlines how a series of national, normative law reforms can give rise to innovations in approaches to regulation. This new hybrid form of regulation, inspired by a French regulation approach combining commission regulation and franchise bidding, could be more effective than previous approaches to regulation, in the sense of being more stable and more closely aligned with stakeholder expectations. This approach to regulation would appear to be more efficient economically, while integrating the objectives of solidarity tariffs and social water access connections. Based on these analyses, our results show (1) the impact on the robustness of new lease contracts on financing constraints, and (2) the advantages of Asset Owner Companies that reconcile explicit commitments and special purposes. We demonstrate that this achieves optimum efficiency by encouraging parties to determine jointly the optimal level of costs and investment. In addition, the mechanism fosters discussion about the possibility of institutionalizing Asset Owner Companies by predetermining the distribution of risk in lease contracts.     

Sex Discrimination,Personal Denial,and Collateral Damage

Many social scientists, especially those interested in social justice, have bemoaned the election of Donald Trump as president of the USA and have decried similar right-wing victories around the globe. We wish our research would have more of an impact. I argue that if we want our conclusions to have more application outside academia, we must first put our own house in order. As illustrated by a personal narrative, we are guilty of the sexism that we decry in others, although we can see that with clarity only in hindsight. Connected to our sexism are some epistemological shortcomings: our false insistence on the primacy of basic research and our false claim to conduct “value-free” research.     

Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth Versus Justice, Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Javier Mariezcurrena * Reconciliation in Divided Societies: Finding Common Ground, Erin Daly and Jeremy Sarkin

It took a long time to get there but, near the close of thelast millennium, humanity embraced measured accountability –instead of the extremes of impunity or vengeance – asthe appropriate fate for perpetrators of mass atrocity. Thisembrace has prompted the construction of institutions, suchas the International Criminal Court and the various ad hoc internationalor internationalized tribunals, to actualize this accountabilityimperative. But this institution-building is only the start of the justicematrix. It is not the end point. A newer second generation ofscholars and activists presses on. Agreeing on the need foraccountability does not mean that existing methods of accountabilityshould become insulated from study or critical inquiry withregard to their progress toward justice goals. Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century and Reconciliationin Divided Societies are bold trendsetters for this second-generationliterature. Edited by Naomi Roht-Arriaza and     

English Pluralism, Functionalism and Corporatism: The Legacy of Paul Hirst

Paul Hirst began his career as a Marxist, and in his later work he made important contributions to numerous debates, the most notorious of which was his pronounced scepticism towards the idea of globalisation. However, Hirst's principal legacy to political theory was the development of his normative theory of 'associative democracy'. This article presents a critique of Hirst's theory emphasising his indebtedness to the tradition of English political pluralism. On a preliminary analysis, Hirst's project appears to have been predicated on a normative defence of voluntarism, individualism and pluralism. However, I make the case that on closer examination this is undermined and contradicted in his work – and in the work of the earlier English pluralists – by an implicit assumption of social unity. This assumption is manifest in the functionalism and corporatism that Hirst presented as necessary components of pluralism, which in turn reflect his unwarranted presumption that industrial productivity, efficient economic governance and welfare provision represent impartial and incontestable axioms of social organisation.