INFRASTRUCTURE AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE IN THE NETWORKED UNIVERSITY

Many people believe that information technology will bring massive structural changes to the university. This paper draws on concepts from both computer science and social theory to explore what these structural changes might be like. The point of departure is the observation that the interaction between information technology and market economics creates incentives to standardize the world. Standardization can be a force for good or evil, depending on how it is done, and this paper develops normative ideas about the relation between the forces of standardization and the places in which university teaching is done. Information technology allows these places to be more diverse than in the past, and a good rule of thumb is that the places in which learning occurs should be analogous in their structure and workings to the places in which the learned knowledge will be used. Universities can support this increased diversity of learning places with appropriate structural reforms, including decentralized governance and explicit attention to certain aspects of the university organization, such as media services and the career centre, that, historically, have been marginalized.     

INSTITUTIONAL DETERMINISM AND THE RISE OF THE WESTERN WORLD

We tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.     

PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE MAINTENANCE AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH

When considering how to allocate scarce resources for the development of public infrastructure, many countries have a tendency to neglect maintenance in favor of new infrastructure investment projects. We examine the role of maintenance expenditures on output and on the distribution of wealth in a heterogeneous agents model. In our model, maintenance affects the quality of existing infrastructure and thus the flow of services derived from it. Furthermore, maintenance expenditures also affect the depreciation rates of both public infrastructure and private capital. We calibrate our model to Mexico and consider several policies that increase the flow of resources to infrastructure and find that a policy that allocates all additional resources to new investment is dominated by policies that allocate at least some of the additional resources to maintenance. Specifically, focusing all additional resources on maintenance is shown to generate the largest reduction in inequality, while a more balanced policy that increases both investment and maintenance maximizes output growth. (JEL E00, E62, H54)     

THE DEMAND FOR HIGHER EDUCATION AND INSTITUTIONAL ENROLLMENT FORECASTING

This paper presents a university enrollment forecasting model and evaluates the model's performance in a case application. The model includes (1) enrollment demand equations with both tuition and labor market variables; (2) equations to forecast values of the labor market variables which influence demand; and (3) procedures to calculate the statistical confidence interval in an enrollment forecast .     

THE EFFECT OF INSTITUTIONAL EXPENDITURES ON EMPLOYMENT OUTCOMES AND EARNINGS

In recent decades, public attention on colleges has risen in response to rising college expenditures and costs. This study uses the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 to investigate how spending impacts salaries and employment outcomes, controlling for selection. Our findings indicate that spending on instruction increases salaries, the probability of full‐time employment, and job match, particularly for more disadvantaged students, while there are smaller benefits of spending on student services for less disadvantaged students. Spending on research has large positive impacts on salary and the probability of full‐time employment, especially for disadvantaged students. (JEL I20, J24)     

(IN)VISIBILITY BLUES: THE PARADOX OF INSTITUTIONAL RACISM

In this article, we demonstrate how the taken-for-granted, inner-workings of culture can become implicated in the (in)visibility of minority members. We seek to illuminate ways in which institutions may unwittingly facilitate (in)visibility through their organizational habitus. We begin by providing further evidence of invisibility and visibility as real and commonly experienced psychosocial phenomena among minorities within predominantly white, institutional settings. In particular, we argue that a minority's inconspicuousness can be simultaneously fused together with one's conspicuousness to form what we call racial/ethnic (in)visibility. This study employs focus-group data collected from a sample of administrators and faculty from elite K-12 independent (private) schools, an institution that admittedly has been slow to make cultural change in its racial/ethnic ideologies and practices.     

ON THE DESIRABILITY OF TAX COORDINATION WHEN COUNTRIES COMPETE IN TAXES AND INFRASTRUCTURE

This article contains two distinct messages. First, when jurisdictions compete in two independent strategic variables, the decision to coordinate on one variable (a tax rate) induces a carry‐over effect on the unconstrained instrument (infrastructure expenditures). Consequently, classical results of the tax coordination literature may be qualified. A second message is that the relative flexibility of the strategic instruments, which may depend on the time horizon of the decision making, does matter. In particular, tax coordination is more likely to be detrimental (in terms of revenue and/or welfare) when countries can compete simultaneously in taxes and infrastructure, rather than sequentially. The reason is that simultaneity eliminates strategic effects between tax and nontax instruments. (JEL H21, H87, H73, F21, C72)     

ENTREPRENEURIAL SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND LOCALLY INITIATED ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE NONMETROPOLITAN UNITED STATES

A community embeddedness perspective hypothesizes that nonmetropolitan localities high on entrepreneurial social infrastructure (ESI) are more successful at implementing economic development projects than those lacking ESI. ESI is a format for converting social capital into organizational forms that facilitate collective action. Logistic regression revealed that localities with projects were more likely to have an unbiased newspaper, multiple contributions by financial institutions to community projects, and more external linkages, Project communities place more emphasis on citizen involvement through civic organizations than through local government. Community-based patterns of interactions and organization are associated with successful collective economic development action.     

THE HAYEK HYPOTHESIS IN EXPERIMENTAL AUCTIONS: INSTITUTIONAL EFFECTS AND MARKET POWER

We report twelve market experiments utilizing a "seller market power" supply and demand structure where two of five sellers can unilaterally increase their profit by withholding supply. The data indicate that both the double auction and posted offer institutions result in traders extracting the bulk of the potential gains from exchange in the market; however, prices generally occur above the competitive equilibrium prediction. Market power in the form of strategic supply withholding does not appear to be responsible for the supra-competitive prices.     

INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE AND THE VELOCITY OF MONEY: A CENTURY OF EVIDENCE

We study common features in the income velocity of money, income, and interest rates for Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Sweden and Norway using annual data from 1870. The recently developed and refined techniques of testing for cointegration are employed.
The evidence suggests there is a unique long-run relationship in velocity but not in income and interest rates. Moreover, we find that only a model which includes institutional change proxies is properly specified. We argue that the evidence is best interpreted in the context of common historical developments in the respective countries' financial systems.     

GET OUT THE (COSTLY) VOTE: INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN FOR GREATER PARTICIPATION

We examine two commonly discussed institutions inducing turnout: abstention penalties (used in 32 countries) and lotteries rewarding one randomly chosen participant (as proposed on the 2006 Arizona ballot). We analyze a benchmark model in which voters vary in their information quality and participation is costly. We illustrate that both institutions can improve collective outcomes, though lotteries are a more effective instrument asymptotically. Experimentally, we provide strong evidence for selective participation: lab voters participate more when better informed or when institutionally induced. Lotteries fare better than fines, suggesting that they may be a useful alternative to commonly used compulsory voting schemes. (JEL C92, D72, D02)     

KILLING THE GOOSE THAT LAYS THE GOLDEN EGG: INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN HONG KONG

This article examines how the rule of law and democratic accountability have affected Hong Kong's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate in the past 20 yr. We find that democratic accountability has deteriorated substantially since the changeover of sovereignty in 1997, while the rule of law has remained strong and stable. Empirical results from autoregressive distributed lag bounds tests show a positive long-run relationship between growth and democratic accountability, and Granger causality tests reveal that democratic accountability causes the growth rate of GDP in the short run. These conclusions are robust to control for the effects of investment and the Asian financial crisis in 1997. ( JEL O18, O49, P17)     

PARTIAL TAX HARMONIZATION THROUGH INFRASTRUCTURE COORDINATION

In this article, we analyze the role of infrastructure coordination in facilitating partial tax harmonization within a coalition of asymmetric jurisdictions. Two main results are obtained. First, productivity asymmetries represent a serious handicap for partial tax harmonization that can be remedied by coordinating nontax instruments when they allow to reduce these asymmetries. Second, infrastructure coordination through the choice of a common investment level is particularly indicated when asymmetries between potential members of a tax coalition are large. The current usage of European Union (EU) structural funds orientated to reduce regional infrastructure deficits is therefore suitable to facilitate tax harmonization within the EU. (JEL H87, H54, H21)     

ART WORLD CULTURE AND INSTITUTIONAL CHOICES:

This article is based on an ethnographic study of the North American experimental film art world, which established an affiliation with academic institutions in the 1970s. Participant interviews, field observations, and primary written sources are used to examine how the material and cultural characteristics of experimental film influence what art world practices have and have not been institutionalized within the academy. The art world is materially characterized by small size, unprofitability, and lack of prestige in larger culture markets and culturally characterized by the importance it attaches to innovation, expression, and active engagement with art, values associated with its avant-garde identity. Its institutions thus emphasize the fostering of innovation and interactive participation (cf. Gilmore 1988), while de-emphasizing the roles of gatekeepers and critics as arbiters of legitimacy and meaning. Rather than promoting standardization and integration uniformly across art world functions of production, distribution, and evaluation, material and cultural factors interact to differentially support various institutional functions.     

THE LONG RUN BEHAVIOR OF THE INCOME VELOCITY OF MONEY IN FIVE ADVANCED COUNTRIES, 1870–1975: AN INSTITUTIONAL APPROACH

The income velocity of money in Canada, the United States, Great Britain, Norway and Sweden displays a U-shaped pattern over the last one hundred years. This paper presents and tests empirically an explanation for this secular pattern emphasizing the influence on velocity of institutional changes. The inclusion into a simple velocity function of institutional developments such as the process of monetization, the spread of commercial banking, financial development and the growth of economic stability improves the explanation of long-run movements in velocity provided by a regression of velocity on real permanent income per head and the interest rate.     

CORRUPTION,PRODUCT MARKET COMPETITION,AND INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM THE U.S. STATES

This article argues that the effect of corruption on competition is dependent on the institutional environment. When institutions are relatively efficient, observed corruption is likely to be associated with relatively less competition. Conversely, in areas with low quality institutions (e.g., excessively burdensome regulations), corruption may lead to relatively more competition. I employ unique data on competition, corruption, and institutional quality across U.S. states from 1997 to 2009 and report that a higher level of corruption is associated with relatively more competition in states with low levels of institutional quality. However, as institutional quality improves, the effect of corruption worsens. Thus, institutional quality is a fundamental determinant of the corruption‐competition relationship. Improving institutional quality, while at the same time reducing corruption, will increase competition and likely improve economic outcomes. (JEL D73, O17, L26)     

THE STUDY OF IDENTITY AS CULTURAL, INSTITUTIONAL, ORGANIZATIONAL, AND PERSONAL NARRATIVES: Theoretical and Empirical Integrations

I argue that the study of narrative identity would benefit from more sustained and explicit attention to relationships among cultural, institutional, organizational, and personal narratives of identity. I review what is known about these different types of narrative identity and argue that these narratives are created for different purposes, do different types of work, and are evaluated by different criteria. After exploring the inherently reflexive relationships between and among these various narratives of identity, I conclude with demonstrating how examining these relationships would allow a more complete understanding of the mutual relevance of social problem construction and culture, of the work of social service organizations attempting to change clients' personal narratives, and the possibilities of social change. Exploring relationships between and among different types of narrative identity would yield a better understanding of how narratives work and the work narratives do.     

RATIONAL MYTH MAKING AND ENVIRONMENT SHAPING: The Transformation of the Zoo

This article examines a period of political conflict and institutional change concerning North American zoos in the 1970s, focusing on the efforts of industry leaders to secure zoos' institutional status in an unsettled environment. The task involved zoos' national trade association in introducing various institutional elements to build its authority before member organizations and external critics alike. I consider the idea of zoo‐directed captive breeding programs for endangered species, which was adopted as a “rational myth” that influenced organizational identity and public perceptions of zoos. The analysis develops institutional sociology's understanding of culture and strategic behavior's roles in institutional change.     

INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY AND TRADE: WHICH INSTITUTIONS? WHICH TRADE?

Using a panel of countries over 1990–2000, this paper examines the extent to which different dimensions of the institutional framework affect total exports, exports of manufactured goods, and exports of nonmanufactured goods. It is observed that exports of manufactured goods are positively affected by the quality of institutions but neither total exports nor nonmanufactured exports. The latter may even correlate negatively with the quality of institutions. The results are robust to estimation methods. ( JEL F14, F15, O17)     

DISTANCE EDUCATION PROVISION BY UNIVERSITIES: HOW INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXTS AFFECT CHOICES

Decisions about distance education are made too often without adequately considering the broader institutional context. This paper explores how a better understanding of 'macro' contexts can lead to more successful choices at the 'micro' level of designing and developing specific programmes. Six models derived from distance learning practices are examined. Analyses of these experiences highlight three primary institutional and political characteristics that have a critical influence on distance education outcomes: private or public emphasis; degree of dedication to distance learning; and holistic or incremental strategy. Three secondary dimensions are also discussed: technology mix; financial and production models; and target markets.