关于我市开展劳动竞赛的调研报告

目前我市劳动竞赛呈现的主要特点是:普遍重视了找准劳动竞赛的切入点;与企事业单位中心工作的融入不断深化;竞赛体制进一步得到健全与完善。今后应注重推动劳动竞赛向系统化、专业化、精细化方向发展,进一步突出竞赛过程的科学管理,并将其与全面提高职工整体素质作紧密的结合。     

乘劳动竞赛东风 铸优质精品工程

城建集团在"五比一创"劳动竞赛中,将劳动竞赛作为工会融入企业经济工作的重要渠道。通过强化全员参与,提升了职工的综合素质;通过强化过程管理,形成规范的责任机制;通过强化目标落实,提高了工程建设目标的实效性。在高标准、高质量、高水平地完成工程建设中,发挥了工会组织的作用,铸造企业的优质精品工程。     

著作权内在利益平衡机制与反垄断法的介入——美国录音制品数字表演权制度的启示

反垄断与保护知识产权均仅是实现其共同目标的手段,其本身并非最终制度目的。就著作权法律制度而言,这体现在其应当建立完善的内在利益平衡机制,从"护权——限权"两个角度对著作权既加以保护、又防止其滥用。在这方面,美国的DPRSR制度堪称典范,我国与之对应的信息网络传播权制度却有待完善。著作权内在利益平衡机制一旦失灵,根据其失灵的情形,可能产生不同的损害。其中对于可能产生竞争损害的,在必要条件下,反垄执法机构应当及时介入,保护市场竞争和消费者利益不受著作权滥用行为的损害,保障反垄断和保护知识产权共同目标的实现。     

Observing FDI spillover transmission channels: evidence from firms in Uganda

Abstract

We observe and analyse three intra-industry foreign direct investment (FDI) spillover transmission channels using unique firm-level data collected from on-site interviews and observations regarding domestic and foreign firms operating in Uganda in 2015. Our main results are: (1) the spillover effects mainly depend on the channel(s) by which they occur (the competition channel is most important while spillover benefits through the worker mobility and the imitation channels are less prevalent) and (2) both positive and negative spillover effects occur within the same channel and, moreover, effects differ by channel for the same case. These are novel and challenging findings that have not yet been recognised in theoretical and empirical research on FDI spillovers. Our results suggest that long-term pecuniary spillover effects are predominantly stimulated via the competition channel and show that only limited short-term and long-term technological spillover effects occur through the imitation and the movement of workers channels. These channels are not only less prevalent, but also appear to be constrained by competition-determined spillovers. We are confident that these directions for future research will have a high pay-off because, as shown by this exploratory fieldwork, a more complete picture of the spillover effects is reached when the channels are considered simultaneously.     

The Time Path of Legislative Party Switching and the Dynamics of Political Competition: The Italian Case (1996–2011)

Political competition is more realistically described as a dynamic process rather than as a series of static stages in which parties compete over policy and government formation. This paper focuses on legislative party switching as the main manifestation of this endogenously evolving process, linking individual switching behaviour to policy and office incentives that are assumed to evolve throughout the life of the entire legislature. Using a new data set tracking the timing of MPs’ changes in party affiliations between 1996 and 2011 in Italy, it is found that switching is mainly motivated by policy reasons and that it is more likely during government formation periods and budget negotiations. These results are a consequence of the interplay between MPs’ ambition and the alternation of key phases in the legislative cycle.     

The 2000 American Presidential Election

Abstract

The 2000 Presidential election was one of the longest, most expensive and closest in American history. It was the Presidential election that exposed the flaws (or genius) of the electoral college system, demonstrated the imperfections of media dependency on exit polls and quick election calling, and showed how a third party candidate with just two percent of the popular vote could make the difference in the crucial state of Florida. Democrats lost states they should have won; Republicans lost every big city and most of their suburbs; and the Florida election came down to a five-to-four muddled decision by the Supreme Court. Americans collectively learned a great civics lesson: that even in a bitter, controversial contest, our candidates accept defeat graciously; the simple act of voting is not so simple; and that for all its shortcomings, the electoral college did work.     

The British general election of 2010 under different voting rules

The 2010 British election resulted in what the British refer to as a “hung Parliament” for the first time in over a generation. This result further heightened the debate over the fairness and utility of the nation’s centuries-old first-past-the-post (FPTP) system. Survey data are used to simulate the election outcome under four different electoral systems beyond FPTP: round-robin pair-wise comparisons, the Borda count, the alternative vote, and Coombs' method. Results suggest that in 2010, the Liberal-Democrats were Condorcet preferred to all other parties and would have won a national election under every tested method except the alternative vote, the method supported by the Liberal-Democrats during the referendum in May 2011 and, of course, FPTP as actually used.     

Fixing failures of U.K. electoral management

Concerns about electoral malpractice have been raised in many democracies in recent years because of errors made in the administration of elections by local election officials (LEOs). This article argues that adopting appropriate policy instruments to manage LEOs is an under-explored method for improving election administration and reducing electoral malpractice. The article provides a case study of the use of performance benchmarking schemes in the UK 2008–2010. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 74 LEOs from 41 organisations subject to newly devised performance indicators. The research demonstrates that performance benchmarking can encourage learning amongst local electoral officials and strengthen central control over them.     

Ethnic party competition beyond the segmented market

The outbidding model of ethnic politics focuses on party competition in an ethnically perfectly segmented electoral market where no party appeals to voters across the ethnic divide. The power sharing model retains this assumption, yet tries to prevent outbidding through moderation-inducing institutional design. Empirically, imperfectly segmented electoral markets and variance of ethnic party strategies beyond radical outbidding have been observed. To provide a stepping stone towards a more complete theory of ethnic party competition, this article introduces the notion of nested competition, defined as party competition in an imperfectly segmented market where some – but not all – parties make offers across ethnic divides and where competition in intra-ethnic arenas is nested within an inter-ethnic arena of party competition. The notion of nested competition helps explain why ethnic outbidding is not omnipresent in contemporary multi-ethnic democracies. A moderate position on the ethnic dimension that appears inauspicious from the perspective of intra-ethnic competition can turn into the strategically superior choice once ethnic parties take the whole system of competitive interactions within intra- and inter-ethnic arenas into account. A case study of nested competition for Hungarian votes in the Vojvodina region of Northern Serbia illustrates the conceptual innovations.     

Electoral Cycles And Local Government Debt Management

The literature provides both theories and empirical assessments that link national electoral cycles and opportunistic incumbents' behaviour. However, at the subnational level the literature is scarce. Using a panel of 238 Spanish municipalities over the period 1992–2005, this paper investigates for the first time in Spain whether electoral events contribute to shape municipal debt policies. We show that the electoral cycle influences the municipal debt per capita. Furthermore, both weak (no-majority) and wealthier municipal governments have higher levels of debt per capita. Finally, our data show that the 2001 Spanish Budgetary Stability Law (stemming from the European Stability and Growth Pact) appears to have reduced the electoral effect on municipal debt per capita.