The economic effects of large industrial undertakings on rual economies

This paper uses an adaptation of the input-output method to test the impact of large-scale industrial undertakings on comparatively small and sparsely-populated areas. It explains how, firstly, a model was built based upon a specimen rural area and including a series of vectors which allow local demand to change as incomes change. The model was then generalized so that data could be inserted to simulate any similar area. The paper then explains the results obtained from inserting a large-scale industrial activity into the model.     

The withdrawal of the welfare state: Elderly care in Sweden in the 1990s

In Sweden, clear changes in the care of the elderly have occurred during the 1990s, with fewer people being provided public care, although greater efforts are now directed towards those most in need of help. Elderly people are cared for increasingly in other ways: by the family, by means of market-provided care, and by voluntary and informal means. Differences between municipalities are considerable. A comparative study was conducted in eight Swedish municipalities, four of them characterized by extensive reorganization of home-help services, and the other four constituting a reference group where such changes had not occurred. The aim was to examine processes of setting local priorities and adjustments in a period of marked structural change. Interviews with local politicians, administrators, professionals, and union representatives, and with the elderly themselves, were the main sources of data. The process of determining the extent and content of home care services in the municipalities was found to be a complex process, one involving a number of partly interdependent factors. Restructuring was found to be greatest in the context of a traditionally strong reliance on home-help services, rather than in the context of institutionalized care, where administrative decision-making and a medical and rehabilitative perspective dominated.     

Environmental governance in federal systems: the effects of capital competition and lobby groups

We argue that centralized and decentralized environmental governance yield equivalent environmental regulations. We model worker, environmental, and capital owner lobby groups that seek influence by offering political contributions. Worker lobbying in the decentralized case has an effect on environmental regulations identical to that of capital owner lobbying in the centralized case. This is because the aggregate effects of environmental regulations on income are equivalent under two institutional designs. Whereas workers carry the full burden in the decentralized case when capital competition occurs, the burden is shared with the capital owners in the centralized case. We present evidence consistent with our theory.     

The flight from universalism

Up to the beginning of the 1990s Sweden had been considered a paragon welfare state in its realisation of universalist principles and an institutional welfare model. This seems to be changing rapidly. Mass unemployment, welfare expenditure cuts and institutional transformation have introduced several selective mechanisms into the Swedish welfare system, adding up to a retreat from universalism. New forms of selectivity can be seen in all layers of the welfare system, both transfer benefits and social security, public personal social services and the relation between state and voluntary organisations. The shifting of burdens from universal social security and insurance-based welfare onto local means tested systems has already meant a restigmatisation of unemployment, as the unemployed lose eligibility for the insurance-based systems, and an increase in the proportion of people who have to rely on poor relief instead of rights-based welfare, and when unemployment has gone up, so have work requirements for benefits. A rising proportion of labour market programmes are now municipally organised obligations instead of state administered rights. Conditioning the right to day care, appraising needs-tested services for the elderly, like home help and care, make personal social services change in the same directions. This may endanger the classical alliance between women and the welfare state.     

Measuring uncertainty

The decision analysis approach to problem solving is widely documented. A range of articles and books have considered ways for analysing problems under uncertainty and also methods for formalising an individual's attitude towards risk in terms of cardinal utility measures. In order to carry out such analyses the uncertainty in any problem has to be explicitly quantified in probabilistic terms. The present article reviews procedures for assessing probabilities and proposes practical guidelines indicating those methods which, in the authors' opinion, are most fruitful for executives to use.     

Shipping in crisis: A trial run for ‘live’ application of the hypergame approach

Hypergame analysis has been developed recently as an aid to the understanding of complex situations in which several parties are in conflict. Until now, the approach has been applied successfully to a range of post hoc case studies. In this paper, we describe an attempt to take the approach one stage further, by applying it to a current problem with some involvement with one of the parties concerned. In this case the problem studied was a crisis in the shipping world. The original analysis was performed two years ago. Having outlined the analysis itself here, we discuss retrospectively its accuracy and usefulness in the light of further developments of the crisis. It is concluded that the approach performed a valuable role in helping to build up an understanding of the problem. As a result of this exercise some comments are made about the way in which we believe this sort of analysis should be used in practice by analysts to give help to their clients.