Assessing the Performance of the Price Cap Plan for Local Exchange Carriers in the United States

In 1991 the FCC implemented a price cap plan for local exchange carriers' interstate access service designed to deal with the regulatory boundaries problem arising from the breakup of AT&T in 1984. The experience with the price cap plan demonstrates the difficulty of predicting productivity growth accurately and makes clear that regulators cannot depend upon a pure price cap plan to keep prices within a reasonable range of costs. With periodic reviews to readjust plan parameters, however, a price cap plan can maintain the rate-of-return close to the target rate-of-return without diminishing the price cap plan's incentives for efficient production. A simple method of recalculating the X-factor based on the rate-of-return over the previous three years worked well in simulations. If this procedure had been used over the price cap period 1991 to 2000, prices would have been 20 percent lower and expenditures on LECs' telecommunications service subject to a price cap would have been $3.8 billion lower.     

September 11th and U.S. Hegemony—Or Will the 21st Century Be American Too?

The tragedy of September 11 highlights the stark contrast between the real and measurable capabilities possessed by one state, and the almost inevitable resentments which the possession of those capabilities engendered in others. The purpose of this article is not to interrogate the strengths and weaknesses of arguments of American decline. Nor is it to speculate at length about September 11th. It is instead to set the scene and try and identify the underlying causes of America's transition from presumed crisis in the 1970s and 1980s to new self-confidence in the 1990s—a self-confidence that some now feel has been shattered by the events of September. While there were important structural reasons why the United States was unlikely to go the way of other powers, it was a peculiar conjuncture of mainly unforeseen developments that combined together after 1989 to improve the U.S. position within the world. We will then move on to discuss the most effective way of characterizing this position. Here, we will mount a defense of the somewhat contentious notion of "hegemony" While recognizing the problems associated with the idea, it will be argued that as a concept it has serious intellectual advantages over its various theoretical competitors. If nothing else, because it focuses on the American role within the world system, rather than just its statically defined position, it is theoretically more suggestive than the less dynamic idea of unipolarity.     

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.     

Regulating Markets: The Real Costs of Poly-Centric Administration under the National Health Insurance Scheme (1912–46)

Using a transaction cost perspective, this article explores the administrative costs involved in quasi-market systems of public service delivery. Employing the historical example of the interwar National Health Insurance scheme, it revives Beveridge's early criticisms of the duplication and expense incurred by the utilization of approved societies for benefit administration purposes. To this we should add the costs incurred by central audit and actuarial evaluation, the main mechanisms through which the societies were centrally regulated. The article concludes that, thanks to regulatory requirements, this poly-centric system of public administration was more expensive than a state-run equivalent – and that this message has significance for recent reforms. In the course of the analysis, the narrowness of a 'pure' transaction cost perspective is demonstrated and common assumptions concerning distinctions between 'the state and the market' in administrative structures are drawn into question. The division of public administration into these two typologies is arguably based on a false dichotomy.     

Book Review

Radical myths and superpower relations in the 1980s

A review of Mark Kaldor, Gerard Holden, and Richard Falk (eds), The New Detente: Rethinking East‐West Relations, Verso, London, 1989.

Paul Taylor and A.J.R. Groom, Global Issues in the United Nations Framework, Basingstoke, Hampshire, The MacMillan Press Ltd., 1989.

Roger A. Coate, Unilateralism, Ideology, and US Foreign Policy: The United States in and out of UNESCO, Lynne Reinner Publishers, London, 1988.

Bary Buzan, Morten Kelstnip, Pierre Lemaitre, Elzbieta Tromer, and Ole Weaver, The European Security Order Recast: Scenarios for the Post‐Cold War Era, Pinter Publishers, London & New York, 1990, pp.x. 282, £8.95 pbk, £30 hbk.     

Reviews

Terry L. Thompson & Richard Sheldon, eds, Soviet Society and Culture: Essays in Honor of Vera S. Dunham. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988, xiii+290 pp., £21.00.

Michael Rywkin, Soviet Society Today. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1989, xii+243 pp., $35.00 h/b, $12.50 p/b.

David Lane, Soviet Society Under Perestroika, London: Unwin Hyman, 1990, xv+401 pp., £40.00 h/b, £12.95 p/b.

Catherine Merridale, Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin: The Communist Party in the Capital, 1925–32. London: Macmillan, 1990, xv+328 pp., £47.50.

Roger Pethybridge, One Step Backwards, Two Steps Forward: Soviet Society and Politics under the New Economic Policy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990, xi+453 pp., £48.00.

Francois Heisbourg, ed., The Strategic Implications of Change in the Soviet Union. London: Macmillan, 1990, vi+227pp., £40.00.

Neil Fodor, The Warsaw Treaty Organisation: a Political and Organizational Analysis. London: Macmillan, 1990, 235 pp., £40.00.

Gerald Segal, The Soviet Union and the Pacific. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1990, xiii+236 pp., £30.00 h/b, £10.95 p/b.

Philip S. Gillette & Willard C. Frank, Jr, eds, The Sources of Soviet Naval Conduct. Lexington, IN: Lexington Books, 1990, xvii+297 pp., $39.95.

Sylvia Woodby & Alfred B. Evans, Jr, eds, Restructuring Soviet Ideology: Gorbachev's New Thinking. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990, 226 pp., £22.50.

Nikolai N. Petro, ed., Christianity and Russian Culture in Soviet Society. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990, xi+244pp., £17.95 p/b.

David A. Dyker, Yugoslavia: Socialism, Development and Debt. London: Routledge, 1990, xi+201 pp., £30.00.

Agnes Heller & Ferenc Fehér, From Yalta to Glasnost. The Dismantling of Stalin's Empire. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990, viii+288 pp., £35.00.

Elemer Hankiss, East European Alternatives. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990, xiv+319 pp., £35.00.

George Blazyca & Ryszard Rapacki, eds, Poland into the 1990s: Economy and Society in Transition. London: Pinter, 1991, x+148 pp., £27.50.

Michael D. Kennedy, Professionals, Power and Solidarity in Poland: A Critical Sociology of Soviet‐Type Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, xiv+421 pp., £45.00, $59.50.

Graham Smith, ed., The Nationalities Question in the Soviet Union. London: Longman, 1990, x+389 pp., £22.50 h/b, £12.95 p/b.

James Muckle, Portrait of Soviet School under Glasnost. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1990, ix+205 pp., £35.00.

Piers Beirne, ed., Revolution in Law: Contributions to the Development of Soviet Legal Theory, 1917–1938. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1990, xiii+202 pp., $49.95.

Richard M. Connaughton, The Republic of the Ushakovka: Admiral Kolchak and the Allied Intervention in Siberia, 1918–20. London: Routledge, 1990, ix+193 pp., £30.00.

Vitaut Kipel & Zora Kipel, eds, Byelorussian Statehood—Reader and Bibliography. New York: Byelorussian Institute of Arts and Sciences, 1988, 398 pp.     

接管放弃的决定因素及后果

过去三十年接管行为引起了学术界的广泛关注,其中大多数研究关注于成功的接管,尤其是研究接管行为对被接管目标公司和竞价公司双方股东财富的影响。与成功接管不同的是,被迫放弃的接管行为(即接管放弃)相对而言受学术界的关注较少。这种令人惊讶的现象是因为相当大比例的接管竞价不成功。本文试图通过对接管失败方面文献的综合调研来说明这种研究上的偏颇。本文关注于两方面文献:第一,回顾和讨论可能影响接管结果的因素;第二,分别从目标公司和竞价公司的角度考察接管放弃的后果。还要分析未来的研究领域,这将进一步深化公司对接管放弃的因果关系的认识。