Why do only some people who support parties actually join them? Evidence from Britain

What makes people join a political party is one of the most commonly studied questions in research on party members. Nearly all this research, however, is based on talking to people who have actually joined parties. This article simultaneously analyses surveys of members of political parties in Britain and surveys of non-member supporters of those same parties. This uniquely enables us to model the decision to join parties. The results suggest that most of the elements that constitute the influential ‘General Incentives Model’ are significant. But it also reveals that, while party supporters imagine that selective benefits, social norms and opposing rival parties’ policies are key factors in members’ decisions to join a party, those who actually do so are more likely to say they are motivated by attachments to their party’s values, policies and leaders, as well as by an altruistic desire to support democracy more generally.     

The new Basle Accord, internal ratings, and the incentives of banks

The Basle Accord of 1988 regulates how much equity banks must set aside as a cushion against the default risk. In its 1999 proposal for a new Accord, the Basle Committee seeks to introduce different equity ratios for customers of different risk levels. The proposal strongly favors external ratings as a means of risk determination. German banks, on the other hand, demand acknowledgement of their internal ratings.This paper shows that, even if assumed that banks have better diagnosis skill than external rating agencies, external ratings are better able to implement the goals of the Basle Committee than internal ratings. This is due to a lack of incentives to truthfully reveal their diagnosis results. These incentives may be provided by supervision of internal ratings, even if imperfect and only occasional. However, this requires that a fine be imposed if the supervising authority comes to a result different from the internal rating assigned by the bank.     

技术转移要求、投资鼓励与国际投资环境的关联关系——结合WTO贸易与投资关系工作组的研究报告和晚近国际投资立法进行分析

根据WTO贸易与投资关系工作组近年来对技术转移要求和投资鼓励问题的专题研究 ,结合晚近国际投资立法的相关规定 ,不难发现未来相关国际投资立法的可能发展趋势 :适当的有关技术移转方面的引导措施可以存续 ,强制性技术转移要求应逐步取消 ;投资鼓励措施只能作为吸引和引导外资的辅助性工具 ,制约投资鼓励措施的国际多边规则会逐步出现并日趋严格     

An economic rationale for firing whistleblowers

Organization members disclosing their superiors’ violations of duty are characterized by high ethical standards and, surprisingly often, fired for blowing the whistle. This paper provides an economic rationale for firing whistleblowers in a model where only the “ethical” type of agent can internally report the manager’s violation of duty. Revelation of an ethical type in the organization increases the perceived future probability of detecting and punishing the manager. Replacing the ethical type by an agent of unknown type restores this probability to its initial level, and this is optimal in organizations in which the standard of proof in establishing the manager’s violation of duty is low.

东亚储备库的成员收益、动力及监督机制:问题及对策

东亚储备库的实质是CMI的多边化。CMI多边化之后,部分成员可获得的贷款额度小于CMI时期。东亚储备库的收益在成员间的配置是不对称的,储备水平较高的经济体并不能从区域储备库中获益。从区域合作主导权的配置看,中、日两国没有获得有效激励。由于东亚各成员间的金融联系弱于各成员与区外的金融联系,东亚储备库缺乏对某一成员的危机做出快速反应的动力机制。东亚区域经济监督机制的建设必须进一步加强,使之成为一个有效且可信的系统。东亚储备库要成为一个更为稳定、有效且运行顺畅的区域合作机制,还需各成员进一步的共同努力。本文就东亚储备库运行过程中的成员收益配置、动力机制和监督机制等问题逐一分析,并提出东亚储备库发展的政策建议以及中国参与该进程的对策。     

Screening accident victims

This paper considers victim heterogeneity in harm levels in a bilateral-care model, where harm is private information. In practice, resources are expended on the verification of damages suffered. We establish a sufficient condition for the possibility to accurately deduce the harm level from the observable care choice without spending on verification. For cases in which this condition does not hold, this paper sets out a simple screening mechanism that induces victims to reveal their type truthfully and induces optimal care in equilibrium without verification costs.     

Incentives, criminal defence lawyers and plea bargaining

Plea bargaining has become a central feature of criminal procedure in Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions. This paper explores an area seldom discussed in the economic literature on plea bargaining: the influence of the defence lawyer's fee contract on the terms of the bargain. In particular, it uses data from one jurisdiction of the impact on case trajectories of changes in publicly funded defence lawyers’ contracts to test the proposition that the nature of the lawyer's contract influences how cases are managed. An event study methodology on a pooled time-series cross-section data set of case trajectories before and after the change in the nature of the contract is used to examine whether the new payment regime significantly changed the trajectories of cases through the summary criminal justice system. Overall the results seem to suggest that the behaviour of defence lawyers may be influenced by financial incentives. This implies that the terms of plea bargains reached between prosecution and defence lawyers may be affected by the defence lawyer's remuneration contract. Consequently, the authors conclude that the role of defence lawyers has been under-researched in the literature on the economics of plea bargaining.     

A note on exogenous changes in incentives for and deterrence of corruption

In this note we amend the model elaborated by Acemoglu and Verdier (2000, The American Economic Review, 90(1),194–211), to examine how agents respond to an exogenous change in incentives. In particular, we apply the theoretical framework to the consequences on the corruption level in Italy of a famous sentence of the Italian Corte di Cassazione in plenary session: in this sentence, no. 500 of 1999, a revolutionary interpretation of the law has increased the area of civil liability for both the public administration and bureaucrats. This is one of the few cases in which the judge substantially legislates in a system of civil law, and the modification in incentives towards or away from corruption comes from an authority that is not part of the game.      

从GDP锦标赛到二元竞争:中国地方政府行为变迁的逻辑——基于1998—2006年中国省级面板数据的实证研究

在中国经济持续30多年高速发展中,地方政府是发展的主要动力,但从上世纪90年代末以来,地方政府在发展经济中所产生的负面效果越来越明显,中央出台了一系列政策去调整和引导地方政府行为,促使地方政府增加社会保障开支以促进社会公平。采用1998—2006年中国省级面板数据进行定量分析以考察地方政府行为的影响因素和变化。研究显示,地方政府在社会保障的财政开支上主要受当地经济发展状况和中央政府的重视程度影响;地方政府在回应中央政府政策调整的过程中,其行为并不同于"晋升锦标赛"所归纳的以GDP增长为主要目标的一元竞争模式,而是演变为在社会公平和经济发展的双重目标下,地方政府分别参与不同目标竞争的二元竞争模式。在既往对中国地方政府行为考察的政治激励和财政激励基础上提出了影响地方政府行为的激励结构、中央与地方的互动关系和地方所处的社会经济情况的分析框架,通过对地方政府行为变化的分析提出二元竞争模式以弥补"GDP晋升锦标赛模式"对地方政府行为解释力的不足。     

Organizational Forms and Incentives in Public Procurement: Natural Experiment at a Large Public Sector Organization in Russia

This article analyses how the intensification of centralized monitoring within public organization may impact incentives for efficiency in those divisions of the organization that have different levels of financial autonomy. The efficiency of divisions’ activities was estimated through their procurement effectiveness. All the divisions were classified as non-commercial units (NCU) funded by the government or as income earning units (IEU) operating in the market and having broader financial autonomy. The results show that under standard monitoring, the IEU had more efficient procurements compared to the NCU. After intensification of centralized monitoring, the differences in performance became insignificant. These findings show that stricter monitoring is efficient for organizations with soft budget constraints, while for organizations with hard budget constraints it is preferable to use more flexible regulations.