ANTITRUST and COMPETITION, HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED

Although antitrust laws enjoy wide support among economists, there was almost no such support during the early years of the Sherman Act. One reason for this transformation is a change in the theory of competition. Until the 1920s most economists viewed competition as a dynamic, rivalrous process that would be stifled by antitrust laws. Once the perfect competition model–which largely ignores rivalry–was accepted, economists' opinions of antitrust grew more favorable. To the extent that antitrust interferes with rivalry and enterprise, the competitive model has very likely misdirected the profession, at least as far as antitrust policy is concerned.     

Anti-Alienism in New Zealand during the Great War: The von Zedlitz Affair, 1915

This article examines the role played by the New Zealand popular press in fostering anti-German sentiment during the Great War. In particular, it focuses on the case of George von Zedlitz, a Wellington academic, who for 12 months after the war's declaration, evaded government legislation intended to dismiss all enemy aliens from their posts, and intern those regarded as a danger to home security. Weekly journals led the campaign against the professor and fed the public's growing interest in the case. The affair sparked considerable public and private debate to the extent that by August 1915 the New Zealand Government was pressured into introducing the Alien Enemy Teachers' Act, which led to von Zedlitz being dismissed from his position.     

Wages,union membership,and public sector bargaining legislation: Simultaneous equations with an ordinal qualitative variable

A simultaneous equations model of teachers’ wages and unionization is constructed. The exogenous impact of collective bargaining legislation is captured by conditioning the wage-union system on an ordinal qualitative variable. A new estimation method involving N-chotomous probit and two-stage least squares is developed. The estimation results are consistent with a private interest theory of regulation, predicting that legislators will avoid direct subsidization of teacher wages. By comparison it is also shown that a conventional dummy variable specification of the qualitative legislative outcomes will yield misleading results. The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of John Addison, Cletus Coughlin, and Robert P. Trost.     

Declining Share of Small Firms in U.S. Output: Causes and Consequences

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model, with large and small firms, to examine possible causes and welfare implications of a declining trend in small firms' share of U.S. output since 1958. Numerical experiments indicate that recent technological advances and government tiering policies that have reduced fixed setup costs of production benefit the emergence of small firms, but lower their output share due to competition for resources among firms. However, this outcome is welfare improving. Therefore, if the policy objective is to raise small firms' output share and economic welfare simultaneously, it is desirable to concentrate on increasing antitrust and deregulatory efforts.     

Anti-Alienism in New Zealand during the Great War: The von Zedlitz Affair, 1915

This article examines the role played by the New Zealand popular press in fostering anti-German sentiment during the Great War. In particular, it focuses on the case of George von Zedlitz, a Wellington academic, who for 12 months after the war's declaration, evaded government legislation intended to dismiss all enemy aliens from their posts, and intern those regarded as a danger to home security. Weekly journals led the campaign against the professor and fed the public's growing interest in the case. The affair sparked considerable public and private debate to the extent that by August 1915 the New Zealand Government was pressured into introducing the Alien Enemy Teachers' Act, which led to von Zedlitz being dismissed from his position.     

State employee bargaining legislation

The authors test competing hypotheses drawn from the public versus private interest theories of regulation to determine the status of bargaining rights of state employees. N-chotomous probit is employed to predict legislation which is characterized as an ordinal scale ranging from prohibition to prescribed bargaining. The presence of voter coalitions rather than intent to remedy monopsonistic production inefficiency explains liberal legislation.     

HOW MANY CHEERS FOR ANTITRUST'S 100 YEARS?

This article describes the ambiguity inherent is U.S. antitrust policy, arguing that it is a necessary consequence of the true, but not commonly understood, task of antitrust policy. Competition is multidimensional in form, and its different dimensions cannot be maximized together. Therefore, antitrust policy cannot maximize competition per se, but aims to achieve an efficient mix of competitive forms. Inadequate knowledge of the technical and preference tradeoffs involved guarantees that questions about the appropriate competitive mix will remain open to debate. The resulting policies, in the author's opinion, merit one cheer out of a possible three.     

THE INFLUENCE OF ECONOMICS ON ANTITRUST LAW

Economists today play prominent roles in formulating antitrust policy and litigating antitrust cases. This paper explains why economics influences antitrust law and describes how economic theories enter and shape the antitrust system. Antitrust policy and doctrine change over time in response to developments in economic theory, and the decentralization of the antitrust adjudication system and the wide latitude accorded judges in interpreting antitrust statutes ensure that legal rules will reflect advances in the economic literature concerning the appropriate content of standards governing business conduct.     

Codetermination: Union style

Many European countries have instigated a form of “industrial democracy” by legislating codetermination schemes. However, codetermination may also be accomplished without legislation. We show that unionizing an industry’s labor supply will also achieve much the same results as mandatory codetermination as long as unions are exempt from antitrust legislation. The value of “union codetermination” will yield returns beyond what economists have previously predicted.     

DIVIDEND POLICY IN REGULATED NETWORK INDUSTRIES: EVIDENCE FROM THE EU

We study the dividend policy of firms in regulated network industries, focusing on the impact of different regulatory regimes and government control. We link payout and smoothing decisions to different regulatory mechanisms (cost‐based vs. incentive regulation) and state versus private ownership. We test our predictions on a panel of listed European electric utilities, accounting for potential endogeneity of the choice of regulatory and ownership patterns. We find that incentive‐regulated firms smooth their dividends less than cost‐based regulated firms and that they report higher target payout ratios. Consistent with the interest group theory of regulation, we find that incentive regulation schemes are less likely when the state is still an important shareholder in the sector. Additionally, our results show that government control undermines the efficiency‐enhancing effects of incentive regulation on dividend policy, for example, lower smoothing is only due to private firms. (JEL G35, L51, L32, L9)     

The Venezuelan Government and the Global Field: The Legislative Battle over Foreign Funding for Nongovernmental Organizations

In recent years, several governments have targeted nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) by enacting legislation that prohibits foreign funding for them. This article uses diplomatic cables, newspaper articles, and interviews with representatives from NGOs and donors to explain the Venezuelan government's passage of legislation prohibiting foreign funding for political NGOs in 2010. Existent political, sociological, and globalization‐oriented theories fail to explain the passage and timing of this legislation. Instead, I utilize and extend global fields theory to examine the Venezuelan government's redirection of its foreign relations, which I argue generated the political opportunity for the government to pass this legislation. I show that the government initially remained keyed into a global subfield involving groups that successfully pressured it to reconsider a more radical form of legislation prohibiting direct foreign funding for all NGOs when it came up for discussion in 2006, including the U.S. and Western European governments, and domestic NGOs. By 2010, however, the government had become embedded within a global subfield involving authoritarian and anti‐imperial governments that had already passed similar legislation, and domestic community councils. These newfound relations insulated the government from reconsideration and allowed it the political opportunity to pass a new, less radical piece of legislation.     

地铁经济中的公私合作——北京地铁4号线项目的运营、经验和意义

北京地铁4号线项目是我国轨道交通领域首先采用公私合作投融资模式建设并获得成功的基础设施项目,该项目降低了政府投资风险,引入了市场竞争机制,取得了良好的经济效益和社会效益。本文重点分析了北京地铁4号线公私合作项目投融资模式的运作思路、程序、成本收益、创新性以及存在问题,以求为未来我国城市基础设施建设的投融资运作提供一定的经验和借鉴意义。     

Right-to-work laws and union density: New evidence from micro data

Although union density is much lower in Right-to-Work (RTW) states than in states permitting union shops, most studies have found that after correcting for omitted-variable and simultaneity biases, RTW laws do not have independent impact on union density. However, these studies typically use data sets which include certain government, agricultural, supervisory and transportation workers who are not subject to RTW legislation thus diluting the effect of RTW laws. When these employees are excluded from the data set, we find that RTW laws do significantly affect union density in the private sector.     

Ruling Classes and Agents of the State: Formal and Informal Networks of Power

This article examines the power–sharing in England in the later Middle Ages considering definitions of where public authority and private power begin and end. It is argued that the English polity resembled more a multiple corporation than a joint-stock company; private and public interest were as inextricably confused as were public and private authority. The essay answers questions provoked by this observation. Who serve whom? Who managed whom? Was the government of England rendered less effectual by the disputes among kings, nobles and gentlemen as to what share of power each was to have? Was ‘England’ damaged by the strife and the striving of individuals, whether royal, noble, or gentle, which the untidy meshing of private and landed power with public and governmental authority made if not inevitable then certainly commonplace?     

Public relations and lobbying: New legislation in Slovenia

This article reviews lobbying in the political sciences and public relations literature, and it also provides a conceptualization for the regulatory practices of lobbying around the world. Then, it presents the newest law on lobbying instituted in 2010 in the Republic of Slovenia, the Integrity and Prevention of Corruption Act. This Act treats lobbying in two ways: (1) as a communication technique used by interest groups to privately influence government officials and (2) as a process of access to information by the same interest groups. This inconsistency follows the same trend for lobbying regulation in Europe and raises important questions regarding lobbying practice and regulation. Lobbying is fundamentally a public relations practice exercised in private and public sectors, and it uses direct and indirect communication between interest groups and their respective government.     

The future of public sector collective bargaining in Canada

Conclusion Looking to the future of Canadian public sector labor relations, the glass is half full. Despite regular intervals when government fiscal and economic policy “trump” public sector bargaining rights through legislation, public sector unions and collective bargaining will survive. Public sector compensation and job security will likely continue to be at least comparable to the unionized private sector, and public sector union density should remain stable, at or near its currently high levels.     

PREDICTING THE QUANTITY OF LAW: Single versus Multiple Remedies in Sexual Harassment Cases

Recently, Black's theory of law has been criticized for failing to capture quasi and de facto governmental social control institutions. A restatement of this theory introduces the idea of "more or less governmental social control" that encompasses government endorsement of private forms of social control or government delegation of social control powers to private parties. Drawing from this, we assess the utility of Black's theory by examining sexual harassment cases handled by the Canadian Human Rights Commission , a quasi-governmental body that has been delegated social control powers. Previous tests of Black's theory have relied primarily on criminal processes that often involve identifiable increments in law. While a sexual harassment case may be settled or dismissed, paralleling the criminal justice process of conviction or acquittal, further increments in law are less identifiable within this quasi-governmental institution. Using over 200 sexual harassment cases in Canada, we test several concepts from Black's theory for explaining decision making within a quasi-governmental social control institution and, specifically, for predicting whether single or multiple remedies are used to resolve these types of cases. Our results show some support for Black's theory, but demonstrate that whether a case was sent to conciliation played a greater role in predicting the quantity of law than the social structural dimensions emphasized by Black or the offense seriousness variables highlighted by more traditional criminal justice research.     

EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE ON ON VERTICAL FORECLOSURE

Recent papers have shown conditions under which vertical mergers can result in anticompetitive foreclosure of unintegrated rivals. One implication of these models is that a necessary condition for anticompetitive foreclosure is that unintegrated rival firms are less profitable after a vertical merger. We test this hypothesis by examining the stock prices of unintegrated rivals at the time of a vertical merger announcement and at the time of a government antitrust complaint. We find no evidence to support the foreclosure hypothesis.     

Data protection legislation in the United Kingdom

This paper is primarily concerned with development of data protection legislation in the United Kingdom from the late 1960s through to the enactment of the 1984 Data Protection Act. Following a series of private members' bills calling for varying degrees of privacy legislation, the UK government commissioned two significant reports in the 1970s. The first, the Younger Report on Privacy (1972), established 10 principles for the handling of personal data that were to influence data protection statutes in Europe. The Lindop Report on Data Protection (1978) examined public- and private-sector computer systems, recommending a flexible legislative environment - with a set of broad principles guiding a data protection authority in its development of codes of practice aimed at various sectors of the economy. The far-reaching nature of those recommendations can now be appreciated in the work of the modern Information Commissioner's Office, 25 years after the publication of the Lindop Report. However, the momentum created by the two studies faded during the period 1979-82. Labour and Conservative governments respectively consulted further and objected to additional bureaucracy involved in creating a data protection authority. During this period of entropy, unpublished memoranda and correspondence demonstrated how former members of the Lindop Committee maintained the pressure on government, ensuring that their work was not forgotten. Eventually, overseas legislation and the need for the UK to maintain its position at the 'crossroads of the information highway' ensured that the UK, albeit grudgingly, enacted a Data Protection Act in 1984. By that time, the UK had lost the lead in defining data protection law and policy established by the Reports of Younger and Lindop. In highlighting findings from the Committees and efforts by dedicated individuals in lobbying successive governments in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the authors demonstrate the importance of preserving historical memory.     

STATE ABORTION LEGISLATION AS A PUBLIC GOOD—BEFORE AND AFTER ROE V. WADE

This paper develops a theoretical model of the public demand for abortion legislation, taking account of two possible types of demand, external and private. All voters possess an external demand for abortion legislation whereas only those voters who could potentially have an abortion possess a private demand. We estimate the public demand for abortion legislation using state-level data prior to Roe v. Wade, and then predict the likely outcome for each state should Roe be overturned. Our predictions suggest that the country as a whole is unlikely to return to as restrictive an environment as existed pre-Roe.