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Economic Institutions (economic + institution)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	50%

Selected Abstracts

THE ECONOMIC INSTITUTION OF INTERNATIONAL BARTER

THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 479 2002
Dalia Marin
Starting with the international debt crisis in the 1980s, international barter increased substantially. More recently, barter has emerged in Russia and South East Asia. This paper examines how barter can help highly indebted countries to finance imports if they cannot use standard credit arrangements. We argue that payment in goods is easier to enforce than payment in money. However, debtors may pay with inferior quality products. We rank goods with respect to these incentive properties and derive the economic institution of commodity money which explains the trade pattern in barter. Our theoretical predictions are consistent with data on barter contracts. [source]

INTERNATIONALISATION AND ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONS.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 3 2008
COMPARING EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE - by Mark Thatcher
No abstract is available for this article. [source]

THE ECONOMIC INSTITUTION OF INTERNATIONAL BARTER

The design of patent pools: the determinants of licensing rules

THE RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2007
Josh Lerner
Patent pools are an important but little-studied economic institution. In this article, we first make a set of predictions about the licensing terms associated with patent pools. The theoretical framework predicts that (i) pools consisting of complementary patents are more likely to allow members to engage in independent licensing and (ii) the requirement that firms license patents to the pool (grantbacks) should be associated with pools that consist of complements and allow independent licensing. We then examine the terms of 63 pools, and show that licensing rules are consistent with these hypotheses. [source]

Learning from Small Change: Clerkship and the Labors of Convenience

ANTHROPOLOGY OF WORK REVIEW, Issue 3 2008
Gavin Hamilton Whitelaw
Abstract Convenience stores are atop the list of global retail chains blamed for homogenizing landscapes, deskilling labor, and eroding local cultural difference. Further still, their very ubiquity and "nonplace"-ness is said to challenge conventional modes of ethnographic inquiry. In the following article, I move beyond such broad assumptions by examining how the convenience store constitutes a meaningful lifeworld and culturally embedded economic institution. Drawing on my training and experiences as a clerk, I explore in particular how impersonal familiarity is constructed and contested within the context of this retail environment. [source]

Nagano Shigeo: Business Leadership in the Asia Pacific Region and the Formation of the Pacific Basin Economic Council

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 4 2001
Takashi Terada
The Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC) was established in 1968 through the initiatives taken by the Japanese and Australian business leaders. This article focuses on the ideas and activities of the Japanese and Australian business leaders in the establishment of PBEC, especially those of Nagano Shigeo and W.R.C. Anderson, both of whom devoted themselves to the establishment of PBEC, while cooperating with each other. The central questions posed are: how and why Nagano and Anderson came to consider it desirable to establish an economic institution in the Asia Pacific region in the mid-1960s; how and why those ideas were refined and transformed into the establishment of PBEC; what approaches business leaders in other countries took towards Pacific cooperation and how the Japanese and Australians adjusted different interests of people in other countries in organising PBEC. Finally, the article assesses the role played by PBEC in the development of economic cooperation in Asia and the Pacific and insists that it should help set up foundations for the subsequent organisations of regional economic institutions such as the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. [source]

APPLYING NORTH'S LAWS OF MOTION TO THE EDGE OF THE WEST

ECONOMIC AFFAIRS, Issue 2 2009
Saad Azmat
This paper uses Douglass North's theories of institutional economics to explain progress in Muslim Spain. It argues that it was efficient economic institutions in the guise of a free-market economy where the property rights of different strata of society were well protected, which ensured lasting prosperity. This paper postulates that while a population explosion could have been responsible for the initial growth in Spain, it was an efficient formal,informal institutional matrix that ensured a high level of long-term growth. [source]

,Whatever is, is right'?

ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 4 2007
Economic institutions in pre-industrial Europe
Institutions,the structures of rules and norms governing economic transactions,are widely assigned a central role in economic development. Yet economic history is still dominated by the belief that institutions arise and survive because they are economically efficient. This article shows that alternative explanations of institutions, particularly those incorporating distributional effects, are consistent with economic theory and supported by empirical findings. Distributional conflicts provide a better explanation than efficiency for the core economic institutions of pre-industrial Europe: serfdom, the community, the craft guild, and the merchant guild. The article concludes by proposing four desiderata for any economic theory of institutions. [source]

Economic Capabilities, Choices and Outcomes at Older Ages,

FISCAL STUDIES, Issue 3 2006
James Banks
Abstract Intense policy and academic interest in the ,economics of ageing' has come about as a result of the demographic trends that have been experienced over the last 50 years and that are projected for the next 50 years. Key economic policy issues relate to the design of public pensions, welfare systems, healthcare and invalidity benefits, and the regulation of private pensions and other retirement saving. This paper presents an overview of the beginnings of a research agenda targeted towards increasing the empirical evidence on these issues in England and providing extensive data for subsequent research. The paper focuses on summarising some recent data on how individuals' economic circumstances, and in particular the ability and willingness to work, change from age 50 onwards. This will be a key factor in determining the ability of economic institutions to adjust to new socio-demographic equilibria in which individuals are living for longer. Further issues for more extensive empirical research are also identified. [source]

Institutional Trust and Subjective Well-Being across the EU

KYKLOS INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, Issue 1 2006
John Hudson
SUMMARY This paper analyzes the impact of institutions upon happiness through their intermediary impact upon individual trust. The empirical work is based on Eurobarometer data covering the 15 countries of the EU prior to its expansion in 2004. With respect to trust, we present evidence that, although it is endogenous with respect to the performance of the institution, changes in the individual's personal circumstances can also have an impact, indicating that trust is not simply learned at an early age. Hence unemployed people tend to have lower levels of trust not only in the main economic institutions , government and the Central Bank , but in other state institutions too such as the police and the law. Trust also differs in a systematic manner with respect to education and household income, increases (decreases) in either increase (decrease) trust in most institutions. If we assume that more educated people make better judgments, this suggests that on average people tend to have too little trust in institutions. However, it is also possible that both of these variables impact on the interaction between institutions such as the police and other government agencies and the citizen, with prosperous, well educated people being at an advantage and possibly able to command more respect. Age too impacts on institutional trust. For the UN, the unions, big business, voluntary organizations and the EU, trust first declines and then increases with the estimated turning points ranging between 44 and 56 years. For most other organizations trust significantly increases with age. Turning to subjective well-being, we find the standard set of socio-economic variables to be significant. But the focus here is on the impact of institutional trust. We find that trust (mistrust) in the European Central Bank, the EU, national government, the law and the UN all impact positively (negatively) on well-being. Hence overall our results support the conclusion that happiness does not solely lie within the realm of the individual, but that institutional performance also has a direct impact upon subjective well-being. [source]

Culture and Economic Systems

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 4 2007
Frederic L. Pryor
Applying a cluster analysis to the results of the World Value Study, this article shows that the OECD nations have five distinct patterns of cultural characteristics. Moreover, these five cultural systems are almost the same as a classification of economic systems that have been derived from a cluster analysis of their economic institutions. A comparison of the cultural characteristics of East and West Germany suggests that the economic system has relatively little influence on the cultural systems. Instead, in a democracy, where the economic system is not imposed by force, the cultural characteristics are more likely to determine the economic system, rather than the reverse. [source]

The Millennium Survey: How Economists View the U.S. Economy in the 21st Century

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2000
Frederick L. Pryor
This essay presents the results of a survey of AEA members on how they expect the U.S. economy to evolve in the next 50 years. More specifically, respondents were asked about changes in a variety of macroeconomic variables and whether such changes would lead to major changes in the economic system or important economic institutions. For the next quarter century, for instance, the respondents foresee the greatest deviation from current trends occurring with regard to growth of per capita GDP, volatility of the financial system, and globalization. They also predict that changes in the economic system will most likely come about from the impact of increasing globalization, increasing inequality of income, and increasing financial instability. [source]

Singapore's transition to innovation-based economic growth: infrastructure, institutions and government's role

R & D MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2006
Winston T. H. Koh
Technological progress and innovation plays a central role in a country's economic progress. As an economy advances to the global technological frontier and narrows the technological gap, an innovation-based growth strategy that focuses on investments in R&D and technology creation offers the greatest potential for economic growth. In this paper, we discuss the requirements for a successful transition, in terms of changes to the technology infrastructure, economic institutions and the incentives' structure. This paper outlines the efforts made by Singapore to re-make itself as an innovation-based economy, and the challenges faced by the government in transforming the nation's infrastructure and institutions to develop innovation capabilities and encourage entrepreneurship. [source]

COMMENTS ON FACTOR PRICES AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN LESS INDUSTRIALISED ECONOMIES, 1870,1939: REFOCUSING ON THE FRONTIER

AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 3 2007
Knick HarleyArticle first published online: 7 OCT 200
economic institutions; factor prices; frontier; globalisation A great deal of the current research into nineteenth- and twentieth-century globalisation has been focused through a neoclassical trade theory lens. Applying the Stopler-Samuelson paradigm from Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory, the result is an approach that sees price convergence as pivotal in defining, identifying, and measuring globalisation. This focus, however, obscures the implications of frontier incorporation and other insights achieved by viewing nineteenth-century globalisation as a mechanism whereby peripheral economies were incorporated into the core of organised economic activity. A frontier-centred perspective also reintroduces the role of economic institutions as a crucial element of economic growth and development. [source]

F. L. McDougall: Éminence grise of Australian Economic Diplomacy

AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 1 2000
Sean Turnell
This paper examines the principal economic ideas of F. L. McDougall, a largely forgotten, sometime government official and ,amateur' economist who exercised an enigmatic influence upon Australia's economic diplomacy in the interwar years. Beginning with his conception of ,sheltered markets', the international manifestation of the Bruce Government's vision for Australia of ,men, money, and markets', the paper explores McDougall's later advocacy of a ,nutrition approach' to world agriculture and its extension into ,economic appeasement'. McDougall's ideas were theoretically unsophisticated, and realized little in the way of immediate achievements. In the longer run they could be viewed more favourably. Naive perhaps and idealistic certainly, McDougall's ideas were part of a broader movement that, after the Second World War, redefined the role of international economic institutions. If nothing else, McDougall's active proselytizing of his ideas lent Australia an unusual ,voice' in international forums at a time when it was scarcely heard. [source]