Thinking land law differently: Section 70(1)(g) and the giving of meanings

Elements of this article first appeared in a paper given at the Hart Conference on Property, 1993.     

Public promotion of new technology ventures: an agency perspective

Abstract: Understanding the proper role of government in the promotion of small technology-oriented firms is a priority given the potential benefits to society as a whole and the inability of traditional market mechanisms to adequately nurture such firms. Further, designing the appropriate public policies to sufficiently satisfy the involved stakeholders has typically proven to be an elusive pursuit. With these issues in mind, this paper applies the concept of agency theory to evaluate government programs seeking to promote technology start-ups. A new program associated with the Innovation Ontario Corporation, which utilizes equity joint ventures between government and small technology-oriented firms, is described and evaluated using the agency perspective. Suggestions are made for further inquiry and analysis. Sommaire: Il importe de cerner le rôle adéquat du gouvernement dans la promotion des petites entreprises technologiques, étant donné, d'une part, les avantages potentiels pour la société dans son ensemble, et d'autre part, l'incapacité des mécanismes classiques du marchéà favoriser comme il le faut l'évolution de ces entreprises. De plus, en régle générale, les efforts visant àélaborer des politiques publiques appropriées et satisfaisantes pour les intervenants en question se sont révélés aléatoires. Compte tenu de tout cela, le présent article applique la théorie des agences pour évaluer les programmes gouvemementaux qui visent à faciliter le démarrage d'entreprises technologiques. Nous décrivons et nous évaluons ici, dans la perspective des agences, un nouveau programme associéà la Société Innovation Ontario, qui fait appel aux co-entreprises avec participation au capital pour le gouvernement et les petites entreprises technologiques. Nous proposons aussi des suggestions pour des enquêtes et analyses plus poussées.     

Do bonus offers shorten unemployment insurance spells? results from the washington experiment

Unemployment insurance is intended to reduce hardship by providing labor force members with partial wage replacement during periods of involuntary unemployment. However, in performing this income maintenance function, unemployment insurance may prolong spells of unemployment. Evidence from a field experiment conducted in Illinois in 1984 suggested that offering unemployment insurance claimants a modest cash bonus for rapid reemployment would increase the speed of return to work and reduce program costs. In 1988 a similar experiment, examining several different bonus offers, was conducted in the state of Washington. Evidence from the Washington experiment indicates that bonus offers do change job seeking behavior, but that only relatively generous bonus offers—about six times the weekly benefit amount—should be expected to significantly change the behavior of people eligible for unemployment benefits.     

PREDICTING STATE ABORTION LEGISLATION FROM U.S. SENATE VOTES: THE EFFECTS OF APPARENT IDEOLOGICAL SHIRKING

The recent Supreme Court decision in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services giving more discretion to states to regulate abortion has led to speculation concerning which states might move to limit abortions. Medoff (1989) attempts to predict how state legislatures might vote on state-level abortion legislation by examining the 1983 Senate vote on the Hatch/Eagleton Amendment. We expand upon Medoff's analysis by incor- porating recent developments in agency theory as it applies to the political agents (i.e., Senators) in the empirical model. The results demonstrate that accounting for Senatorial "shirking" and state ideology substantially im- proves the predictive ability of the model for the Senate abortion vote. The predicted votes of the state's Senators, after eliminating the effects of apparent Senatorial shirking, are used to infer the likelihood of state-level legislation substantially restricting abortion. We compare these results to a base model that ignores the issue of shirking and find increased predict- ability and several differing results.