Civil Society in Comparative Perspective: Involvement in Voluntary Associations in North America and Western Europe

Involvement in voluntary associations is analyzed from the perspective of questions raised in the debate about civil society. After demarcating the concept of civil society in relation to the community, the market, and the state, expectations are formulated about the negative effects of modernization and individualization on volunteering and the positive effects of volunteering on social capital and public discourse. World Values 1990 data are used for inter- and intranational analyses. Neither rankings of thirteen Western nations nor in-depth analyses of the U.S., the Netherlands, and Italy support worried reflections about the effects of modernization. The Idea that involvement in voluntary associations is conducive to social cohesion and political democracy finds empirical support. Both mere membership of an association and actual volunteering within such an association appear to be important in this respect.     

Axiomatization of a class of share functions for n-person games

The Shapley value is the unique value defined on the class of cooperative games in characteristic function form which satisfies certain intuitively reasonable axioms. Alternatively, the Banzhaf value is the unique value satisfying a different set of axioms. The main drawback of the latter value is that it does not satisfy the efficiency axiom, so that the sum of the values assigned to the players does not need to be equal to the worth of the grand coalition. By definition, the normalized Banzhaf value satisfies the efficiency axiom, but not the usual axiom of additivity.In this paper we generalize the axiom of additivity by introducing a positive real valued function on the class of cooperative games in characteristic function form. The so-called axiom of -additivity generalizes the classical axiom of additivity by putting the weight (v) on the value of the gamev . We show that any additive function determines a unique share function satisfying the axioms of efficient shares, null player property, symmetry and -additivity on the subclass of games on which is positive and which contains all positively scaled unanimity games. The axiom of efficient shares means that the sum of the values equals one. Hence the share function gives the shares of the players in the worth of the grand coalition. The corresponding value function is obtained by multiplying the shares with the worth of the grand coalition. By defining the function appropiately we get the share functions corresponding to the Shapley value and the Banzhaf value. So, for both values we have that the corresponding share functions belong to this class of share functions. Moreover, it shows that our approach provides an axiomatization of the normalized Banzhaf value. We also discuss some other choices of the function and the corresponding share functions. Furthermore we consider the axiomatization on the subclass of monotone simple games.     

Managed care matures. What's behind the wave of anti-HMO legislation?

At first glance, it may appear as if managed care itself may be doomed. The avalanche of bills, measures, initiatives, Federal regulations, etc., seemed overwhelming in late 1996. Did this, in fact, portend a national shift away from managed care? What does the consumer protection and regulatory activity really mean? What directions for the future can be identified? This article seeks to answer those questions and highlights a case study of "reform gone awry" that may hold lessons for the national scene. The anti-HMO legislation activity does not represent a repudiation of managed care. Rather, it may be seen as a maturing of the entire process of redefining our medical delivery and financing system.     

The business environment in the 1980s

Dr. Harold Linstone, the editor of ‘Technological Forecasting and Social Change’ holds that too often the future is too much discounted. This seems particularly true in the case of business corporations, which tend to pay lip service to long-range planning—especially when prospective studies point to threats rather than to opportunities.The author believes that truly long-range planning will rarely be operative until business corporations muster the political will to jointly write a scenario of their (interlinked) future, and to act accordingly. Illustratively and speculatively, such a scenario might read as follows:     

Strategic planning in small and medium-sized companies

In analysing the characteristics of strategic planning applications in different types and sizes of companies, confusion often arises not because of the application but because of the definitions utilized. This paper analyses the use of strategic planning concepts in small and medium-sized companies in Holland. As the author points out, in this context the definition of small and medium-sized is determined by five strategically relevant criteria which are distinctive. The author points out, however, that whilst these criteria are distinctive of the category of small and medium-sized companies surveyed, they do not all have to occur at the same time; the higher the number that do occur, the more typical the company. Whilst this paper does not, as the author admits, represent the result of a systematic survey, the authors wide experience as a consultant is in itself a valuable background to his analysis. Indeed, the findings stated in this paper represent an analysis of the strategic planning practises of some 75–100 companies. Therefore, in view of the detailed criteria utilized and the number of companies analysed the results represent an important addition to our knowledge of the application of strategic planning.     

Leaving Home and Destination of Early Nest Leavers: Ethnicity,Spaces and Prices

This study examines ethnic differences in leaving the parental home and the choice of destination (both location and quality of housing) in the Netherlands. Using unique individual administrative panel data, we study the mobility of the entire birth cohort 1983. In contrast to previous studies, this paper includes the geographical location and the quality of destination living arrangements in the analysis, in an attempt to explain ethnic differences in leaving the parental home. We show that ethnic minority youth, in particular those from Turkish and Moroccan origin, improve their housing quality when leaving the parental home. This results in earlier home-leaving than among young people of native Dutch origin. Our results on the early home-leaving behaviour of ethnic minority youth are robust with regard to the geographical distance of nest leavers.     

The Contribution of Work Representation to Solving the Governance Structure Problem

The aim of this paper is to explain in what ways work representation may contribute to an efficient governance structure. The insights from institutional economic theories will be applied to two different kinds of employee participation, namely trade unions and works councils. From the discussion it follows that the latter may be better equipped than the former to play an effective role in corporate decision-making, owing to its specific institutionalisation. The paper concludes with the finding that works councils could fulfil an important economic function, by protecting the interests of the employees as well as those of the shareholders.Several agency problems can be solved. By giving the workers consultation and codetermination rights, this will reduce their dependence on unilateral decisions by the management and may stimulate them to be more cooperative, leading to greater productivity and less monitoring costs. By giving the workers information rights, the management becomes more disciplined as well. Because contrary to trade unions the works councils usually do not determine the terms of employment, the owners of the firm do not need to fear that the employees will be able to extract a portion of the firm's profits.     

Nonparametric Survival Estimation when Death is Reported with Delay

In disease registries there can be a delay between death of asubject and the reporting of this death to the data analyst.If researchers use the Kaplan-Meier estimator and implicitlyassumed that subjects who have yet to have death reported arestill alive, i.e. are censored at the time of analysis, the Kaplan-Meierestimator is typically inconsistent. Assuming censoring is independentof failure, we provide a simple estimator that is consistentand asymptotically efficient. We also provide estimates of theasymptotic variance of our estimator and simulations that demonstratethe favorable performance of these estimators. Finally, we demonstrateour methods by analyzing AIDS survival data. This analysis underscoresthe pitfalls of not accounting for delay when estimating thesurvival distribution and suggests a significant reduction inbias by using our estimator.