Effect of economic planning on business decisions

The fact that the United States has not faced an economic perplexity of current dimensions since the depression days hardly needs any emphasis. The current economic slowdown is significant because no recovery measures which may be applied to cure the economy are in sight. Since the Great Depression, especially after World War II, Keynes' economic theories have successfully been applied in the U.S., as also in other countries of the Free World, to put the economy back on path to recovery. Unfortunately, Keynesian measures do not seem to cope with the current economic woes. Apparently, new ways need to be sought and employed to get the economy back on track. Among many new ideas that have been advanced to restore economic growth, one is national economic planning by which the Government would play an active role in setting goals for the economy and devising means to reach them.The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study that the author undertook to probe the opinions of chief executive officers of the largest U.S. corporations on the whole idea of national economic planning in the United States. This study is based on interviews with 23 chief executives officers (CEOs) in different industries. Table 1 shows the background of these CEOs. Specifically, the author refers to such questions as: What positive and negative attitudes do the chief executive officers maintain toward national economic planning; what difficulties do they think will have to be surmounted to accomplish national economic planning in the U.S.; what influence may national economic planning have on various business decisions; and how may national economic planning affect corporate strategy?     

Effective Public Administration for a Mid-Sized Space Power: Comparison of Canada and the United States

The development of space technologies is tied to economic and national interests. Historically, space technology development has been dominated by government agencies. There are key difference between the public administration models implemented by Canada and the United States due to the vast differences in resources. Topics examined in this article include legislative acts, organizational structure, contractor relations, breadth of research, national prestige, policy setting, and the economic activity generated by public space programs. In contrast to the United States, Canada has emphasized development of industrial, rather than in-house, capabilities and has focused on developing niche expertise to achieve national objectives.     

The dangers of centralized economic planning

There is little evidence that there is much value in riveting attention on the question of strategic planning in an era of low growth or negative growth. Rather, there is value in discussing strategic planning in terms of the efficient realization of society's goals— whether expressed as economic goals or as non-economic aspirations. This article contains some observations on corporate strategic planning, provides perspective on the energy and materials scarcity question, and warns that detailed economic planning by government thwarts the optimal use of resources to improve living conditions for everyone. The author holds that renewed government reliance upon the workings of a competitive market economy is indispensable for achieving this goal.     

The national park system in the United States: An overview with a survey of selected government documents and archival materials

The idea of national parks originated in the United States over a century ago. This article examines the evolution of the unique concept and suggests selected research aids, government documents, and archival holdings useful for further study of the national park system.     

Leadership—The NASA approach

The leadership status of the United States in aeronautics and space today is an achievement of the NASA management approach, an extraordinary organizational process in which long-range planning plays a major role. Soviet space exploits served as a catalyst to U.S. space exploration. With a 25 year historical perspective, the author describes the successful U.S. response to the Soviet challenge, i.e. the establishment of NASA and the creation of the NASA approach, a long-range planning process in aeronautics and space, responsive to national policy and purpose.     

An Integrated Model of Cumulative Growth: Empirical Evidence for Nine OECD Countries, 1960-1990

ABSTRACT: This paper is an empirical analysis of the interaction between the dynamics of demand, productivity and employment in nine industrial countries: the United States, Canada, Japan, West Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Belgium, 1960-1990. Its theoretical framework derives from the Kaldorian approach to cumulative growth in both its external and internal causation versions. The model we adopt is of an integrated kind, in which foreign demand is determined endogenously and domestic demand is divided into various component parts: exogenous for the public sector and endogenous for the private. More specifically, this is carried out by describing the way the dynamics of private consumption and private investments depend on economic variables located in the spheres of distribution and of technology, so that we can consider the operations of income compensation effects induced by technological change — via changes in income and its social distribution — as well as price compensation effects— the higher competitiveness of national products in foreign markets — mediated through the dynamics of exports.     

The future of U.S. government—corporate relations

The future of government—corporate relations in the United States was studied using the Delphi research methodology. An expert panel estimated the dates of occurrence for 55 events, forming a futures scenario. The events were grouped into the five topic areas of the natural environment, employment, corporate governance, the economy and regulation/planning. The findings from the research indicated that the federal government will play an increasingly active and important role in the regulation of business over the next 20 years. However, there will not be drastic changes in structure or major discontinuities in the institutional relationships.     

Federal printing policies 1789–1861

The vast majority of documents authored by the Federal Government before the formation of the Government Printing Office in 1861 were printed under contracts let by officials responsible to either or both houses of Congress. As governmental functions and political competition evolved the role and process of public printing was subjected to changes that reflected emerging conditions. An examination of early printing policies provides some background against which to view the variability in form, frequency, content, and format that characterized United States government publications issued during the period covered by this paper.     

A Specialized Inventory Problem in Banks: Optimizing Retail Sweeps

Deposits held at Federal Reserve Banks are an essential input to the business activity of most depository institutions in the United States. Managing these deposits is an important and complex inventory problem for two reasons. First, Federal Reserve regulations require that depository institutions hold certain amounts of such deposits at the Federal Reserve Banks to satisfy statutory reserve requirements against customers' transaction accounts (demand deposits and other checkable deposits). Second, some inventory of such deposits is essential for banks to operate one of their core lines of business: furnishing payment services to households and firms. Because the Federal Reserve does not pay interest on such deposits used to satisfy statutory reserve requirements, banks seek to minimize their inventory of such deposits. In 1994, the banking industry introduced a new inventory management tool for such deposits, the retail deposit sweep program, which avoids the statutory requirement by reclassifying transaction deposits as savings deposits. This is an interesting inventory problem for fungible items, where the conversion process is reversible. We examine two methods for operating such sweeps programs within the limits of Federal Reserve regulations, and we develop a stochastic dynamic programming model to implement one such method, the threshold method.     

Government publishing in microform in Canada: A survey

This issue of the column continues its survey of microform publishing by international and national agencies. Emphasis in this issue is placed on Canada and its rapidly developing programs for micropublishing. Mrs. Suzanne Dodson, Head of the Government Publications and Microforms Division at the University Library of the University of British Columbia provides an outstanding summary of various activities currently taking place in the various provinces as well as at the national government. We certainly are pleased to have Dodson as guest column editor for this issue.Although there are, indeed, many similarities between Canada and the United States regarding the development of microformatted material, some critical differences exist. Perhaps the most important one being the issue of copyright. In Canada, the existence of Crown Copyright means that the copyright to everything produced by the government automatically belongs to the government and government publications may not be reproduced without the government's permission. Thus, commercial publication of government documents has been somewhat restrained.Nonetheless, excellent commercial publications as well as national publications have been produced and are being developed. These are identified and described in detail by Dodson. Document librarians around the world will profit by a careful review of Dodson's commentary as a means to update their knowledge about micropublishing in Canada. Clearly, the Canadians are “on the move” and Dodson's excellent review suggests a number of ideas and innovations that are of value to anyone concerned with microformatted government publications.     

Should government and company planners influence each other?

With the National Plan of 1965, government planning in Britain got off to a poor start. Now, with the Governement's green paper, The Task Ahead, it seems about to be reborn. In this article the author argues the case for closer co-operation between planners in government and planners in business along the lines of the planning dialogue which occurs in NEDC. He answers critics who complain of government pressure on industry and the undue influence of business on government, and suggests that “consultative planning is essential if national plans to be made flexible and realistic, and if company plans are to be made with the national interest in mind”.     

媒体监督公司治理的实证研究

随着国内改革环境的逐步宽松和市场竞争的加剧,为了赢得社会声誉和获得商业利益,媒体有动力去监督公司中存在的治理问题。在本文所选取的96个研究样本中,60.42%存在公司治理问题的企业都在证监会正式介入调查前受到过媒体的质疑和负面报道,说明媒体并非事前"缄默无语"、事后"言辞铿锵",而是积极地扮演了资本市场监督者的角色;基于成本与收益的权衡考虑,媒体会选择性质严重和涉及金额大的公司治理问题进行负面报道。本文的研究结论一方面为媒体在转型经济国家发挥公司治理监督者的作用提供了证据,另一方面也分析了在法律制度和市场化尚不完善的情况下,影响媒体发挥监督作用的因素,依此提出了若干政策建议。     

National health insurance--to be or not to be

It has been pointed out by advocates of change in the U.S. health care delivery system that, with the exception of the Republic of South Africa, the United States is the only industrialized nation without a system of national health care. Rising costs and an increasing percentage of Americans without insurance and with limited access to health care services has heightened interest in the development of a mechanism for payment for health care services in this country.     

The female manager—The pressures and the problems

There are an increasing number of women entering full-time careers in occupations that were once male dominated, for example, management. Recent surveys have suggested that more women are pursuing management careers in Western Europe and the United States. The pressures on these women are enormous in view of industry's inflexibility. Corporate policies must change if women are to survive in organizations. A variety of these policies are discussed in this paper, e.g. flexible work weeks, maternal and paternal leave, change and relocation policies, career planning, etc.     

Understanding managers' preferences for internal markets versus business planning: A comparative study of German and U.S. managers

Internal markets and centralized business planning are alternative organizational designs for coordinating the economic activities within a firm. While some preliminary theory about when to use each exists in the literature, little is known about how managers understand and decide when to use one or the other. The study develops and tests in samples of German and U.S. managers a preliminary theory about factors that influence the preferences of managers for internal markets or planning as alternative modes of coordination. Managers' preferences are influenced by key constructs of internal markets and planning theory (the perceived limits of planning, speed and efficiency of markets, motivation potential of markets), but also by differences in their institutional contexts (national government and business context, company culture, and recent company experience with planning and internal markets). The study is the first to explore the substitutability of internal markets and planning within the strategic decision process of managers, closer to where it becomes reality.     

Federalism and the Implementation of Environmental Policy: Changing Trends in Canada and the United States

In a federal system of government, powers are shared by the national and sub-national units in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution. However, the process of policy implementation may differ on the basis of allocation of power and the nature of the system. Canada and the United States of America adopted federal systems of government, and faced similar pressures for implementing policies on environmental issues. Yet, the degree of success and outcome appear to be different due to variations in the strength of the respective federalist systems. An analysis of the various aspects of the federal system in the two countries reveals noticeable differences in institutional configurations, relationship between national and sub-national units, and variances in intra-institutional relations. All these have contributed to a divergence in the past, but there is an emerging trend of convergence as both the Canadian and American governments are gradually moving away from their existing patterns of policy implementation toward a new approach involving private-sector initiatives and self-enforcement with strong inclinations toward voluntarization, corporatization and marketization.     

Planning Strategically or by the Book?—Contentious Land Use Planning in South-eastern Finland

The debate on strategic spatial planning highlights the limitations of statutory land use planning in weighing up future options for spatial development, particularly in instances of rapid change. This paper draws on this debate in order to analyse planning institutions and practices in Finland. The case in point is the south-eastern border region where interdependencies with Russia, particularly shopping tourism, have created pressures on land use and led to contentious planning processes between regional and central levels of government. It is argued that, in the absence of cross-border spatial co-ordination, there is a need to establish links between regional land use planning and visions of spatial scenarios in the national context.     

Competition within the U.S. National Security Regime: A study of the U.S. Aerospace Defense Sector

This article examines the aerospace defense sector and the national export control regime within which U.S. corporations operate. While the U.S. federal government plays many roles in this industry, the focus here is on its role as regulator of defense exports from the United States. From this vantage point, ten case studies illustrate the difficulties faced by companies in this challenging environment, and highlight factors that lead to noncompliance with U.S. government regulations. Firm performance effects are investigated, including impacts on profits, share price, and reputation. The paper concludes with implications for international management practice and international business research that reflect realities in the aerospace defense sector.     

Insurance Against Climate Change and Flooding in the Netherlands: Present, Future, and Comparison with Other Countries

Climate change is projected to cause severe economic losses, which has the potential to affect the insurance sector and public compensation schemes considerably. This article discusses the role insurance can play in adapting to climate change impacts. The particular focus is on the Dutch insurance sector, in view of the Netherlands being extremely vulnerable to climate change impacts. The usefulness of private insurance as an adaptation instrument to increased flood risks is examined, which is currently unavailable in the Netherlands. It is questioned whether the currently dominant role of the Dutch government in providing damage relief is justified from an economic efficiency perspective. Characteristics of flood insurance arrangements in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France are compared in order to identify possible future directions for arrangements in the Netherlands. It is argued that social welfare improves when insurance companies take responsibility for part of the risks associated with climate change.