Contracts, Investment Incentives and Efficiency in the Restructured Electricity Market

The paper highlights and analyzes the tension between designing power sale agreements that reduce uncertainty for the private investors and running the power systems as more efficiently as possible in the restructured electricity market. The features of such agreements are preliminary in resolving this tension and, therefore, in orienting the development of electricity markets restructuring towards a competitive direction. We define a theoretical contractual model, highlighting the tension between the two opposite directions: reducing uncertainty and risk in order to attract private investment and operating the power system efficiently. We apply the theoretical model for analysing the formal structure of a selected sample of power purchase agreements, really operating in the restructured electricity markets all over the world. We show how competitive contracting can increase efficiency pressures and, at the same time, increase investment risk. We then discuss some policy implications for the design of power purchase contracts in the restructured electricity market.     

Incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK Law: Implications for education

This article focuses on the UK government's proposal to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, and the consequences of incorporation for the individual in the context of education. The first part of the article explores the mechanisms proposed for bringing about incorporation, and stresses in particular the importance attached by the government to upholding the fundamental principle of the sovereignty of the UK Parliament. In this context it emphasises the government's decision to deny to the British courts the capacity to strike down legislative provisions as being incompatible with Convention rights. The second part of the article goes on to explore (highly selectively) a number of key areas in which incorporation of the ECHR has the potential to enhance individual rights in the field of education, including parental choice of school, collective worship and religious education, and aspects of the secular curriculum. The discussion emphasises strongly the likely significance of the UK government's reservation to the second sentence of Article 2 of the First Protocol to the ECHR. Broadly, the conclusion drawn is that the incorporation of the Convention will have only a very marginal impact on the reality of individual rights to education.     

铁路公安机关转制后组织结构与绩效评估改革初探

铁路公安机关转制是政治体制改革的一部分。转制后,铁路公安机关警务活动外部环境发生了变化,直接参与铁路建设的非警务活动也将减少。为了适应这些变化,铁路公安机关一方面要从宏观结构和微观结构两个方面构建均衡、合理的组织结构,另一方面要科学界定警务绩效评估内容,制订主客观相结合的警务绩效评估标准。     

A Period of Moderate Growth

正Five years after the financial crisis swept across the world,the global economy is still going through profound restructuring and changes.The developed world is heading toward stability,while the emerging markets are undergoing a slowdown,with China entering a moderate economic growth period.In the future,a polarization will occur on the global stage.Moreover,following the conclusion of the Bali Package by the World Trade Organization(WTO),the globalization drive will surge again and a battle over rules will heat up.     

我国公司瑕疵设立法律制度建构

为了使“公司”组织扬善抑恶、适得其所，生死运行皆符合缔造“公司”的制度宗旨，各国无不对公司一生予以指引或者规制，公司的设立条件及条件违反的救济措施无疑也在法律的视野之中。相较世界发达国家，我国虽从正面较为详备地规定了公司设立条件及程序，但对违反此条件和程序的瑕疵设立却几乎未作任何反面规制。因此，司法机关和工商登记机构面对瑕疵设立纠纷时该如何分工、如何处理，利害关系人该如何救济、通过什么渠道救济，以及责任人应该承担什么责任，如何预判自己的瑕疵设立行为法律后果等等问题，皆因这一重大立法缺失而无从回应。     

论减税措施在应对金融危机中的作用

为应对世界金融危机冲击,扩大内需,我国政府采取了一系列的减税措施.这些措施在稳定企业生产,促进产业结构调整,刺激消费,稳定外需,扶持中小企业和促进就业,推进政府自身改革等方面具有重要作用;同时,可能带来财政赤字扩大,贫富差距拉大,通货紧缩与通货膨胀交替出现的后果.本文从宏观调控角度、经济基础和上层建筑角度以及综合效用方面来认识和评价减税政策.     

Shifting the Risk: New Employment Patterns, Informalization, and Women's Work

The paper argues that the processes of informalization of jobs observed during the past decades have affected both high and low income countries. Starting at the micro level of the firm, the emphasis is on how economic restructuring and globalization have generated the growth of informal activities—resulting in the vicious circle of poverty and economic insecurity for an important proportion of the population. The second part of the paper analyzes the growth of women's participation in informal activities, emphasizing that there are contradictory forces at work regarding women's employment. Despite a stubborn persistence of gender discrimination and obstacles to women's advancement, progress has taken place on several fronts, such as in the education field and in the absorption of female labor in many production processes. The paper concludes by pointing out that poverty eradication programs must emphasize the need to generate decent jobs without which these programs will continue to be ineffective. In addition, re-distributive mechanisms and different forms of social protection are needed to counteract the forces and policies generating economic insecurity.     

Party matters: the institutional origins of competitive hegemony in Tanzania

Electoral authoritarianism has emerged as a primary mode of authoritarian rule in the post-Cold War era. It is also a notably heterogeneous phenomenon, in terms of both its impact upon incumbents and the quality of contestation. This article investigates a specific type of electoral authoritarian outcome, a competitive hegemony. In competitive hegemonies regimes are able to dominate elections by large vote margins, but with comparatively much lower levels of electoral fraud and coercion. Using a case study of Tanzania and its ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), this article argues that distinct investments made under single-party rule into party institutionalization and the incorporation of subsistence-based peasants provided CCM with additional sources of elite cohesion, strong mobilization capacity, and therefore greater stability. The article shows how during multiparty elections elite defection has in fact been minimal, and voting patterns largely coincide with infrastructural investments made as part of Tanzania's socialist development programme, ujamaa. Moreover, while Tanzania's opposition parties have made important strides in recent years in terms of institutionalization, they are still precluded from competing effectively in large portions of the country where demand for new parties is low.     

Restructuring,Reconsidering, Reconstructing: Implications for Health Human Resources

Abstract

In the 1990s, many health care organizations adopted restructuring strategies that were inappropriate to an industry in which the effective use of workers' knowledge, skills and social relations was essential to productivity. Workforce cuts and the withdrawal of workplace supports without sufficient consideration of human consequences led to a demoralized and short‐staffed workforce rather than cost containment. This paper uses two neo‐capitalist perspectives to illustrate the impact of restructuring initiatives on nursing, the most numerous health care profession. It describes how reconsideration of strategies adopted during restructuring has led to a search for new approaches to institutional change that make optimum use of human and social capital.