Transfers, contracts and regulation: a new institutional economics perspective on the changing provision of social housing in Britain

Social housing policy in the UK mirrors wider processes Associated with shifts in broad welfare regimes. Social housing has moved from dominance by state housing provision to the funding of new investment through voluntary sector housing associations to what is now a greater focus on the regulation and private financing of these not-for-profit bodies. If these trends run their course, we are likely to see a range of not-for-profit bodies providing non-market housing in a highly regulated quasi-market. This paper examines these issues through the lens of new institutional economics, which it is believed can provide important insights into the fundamental contractual and regulatory relationships that are coming to dominate social housing from the perspective of the key actors in the sector (not-for-profit housing organisations, their tenants, private lenders and the regulatory state). The paper draws on evidence recently collected from a study evaluating more than 100 stock transfer organisations that inherited ex-public housing in Scotland, including 12 detailed case studies. The paper concludes that social housing stakeholders need to be aware of the risks (and their management) faced across the sector and that the state needs to have clear objectives for social housing and coherent policy instruments to achieve those ends.

Proceedings of the inaugural construction management and economics ‘Past, Present and Future’ conference CME25, 16-18 July 2007, University of Reading, UK

This conference was an unusual and interesting event. Celebrating 25 years of Construction Management and Economics provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the research that has been reported over the years, to consider where we are now, and to think about the future of academic research in this area. Hence the sub-title of this conference: “past, present and future”. Looking through these papers, some things are clear. First, the range of topics considered interesting has expanded hugely since the journal was first published. Second, the research methods are also more diverse. Third, the involvement of wider groups of stakeholder is evident. There is a danger that this might lead to dilution of the field. But my instinct has always been to argue against the notion that Construction Management and Economics represents a discipline, as such. Granted, there are plenty of university departments around the world that would justify the idea of a discipline. But the vast majority of academic departments who contribute to the life of this journal carry different names to this. Indeed, the range and breadth of methodological approaches to the research reported in Construction Management and Economics indicates that there are several different academic disciplines being brought to bear on the construction sector. Some papers are based on economics, some on psychology and others on operational research, sociology, law, statistics, information technology, and so on. This is why I maintain that construction management is not an academic discipline, but a field of study to which a range of academic disciplines are applied. This may be why it is so interesting to be involved in this journal. The problems to which the papers are applied develop and grow. But the broad topics of the earliest papers in the journal are still relevant today. What has changed a lot is our interpretation of the problems that confront the construction sector all over the world, and the methodological approaches to resolving them. There is a constant difficulty in dealing with topics as inherently practical as these. While the demands of the academic world are driven by the need for the rigorous application of sound methods, the demands of the practical world are quite different. It can be difficult to meet the needs of both sets of stakeholders at the same time. However, increasing numbers of postgraduate courses in our area result in larger numbers of practitioners with a deeper appreciation of what research is all about, and how to interpret and apply the lessons from research. It also seems that there are contributions coming not just from construction-related university departments, but also from departments with identifiable methodological traditions of their own. I like to think that our authors can publish in journals beyond the construction-related areas, to disseminate their theoretical insights into other disciplines, and to contribute to the strength of this journal by citing our articles in more mono-disciplinary journals. This would contribute to the future of the journal in a very strong and developmental way. The greatest danger we face is in excessive self-citation, i.e. referring only to sources within the CM&E literature or, worse, referring only to other articles in the same journal. The only way to ensure a strong and influential position for journals and university departments like ours is to be sure that our work is informing other academic disciplines. This is what I would see as the future, our logical next step. If, as a community of researchers, we are not producing papers that challenge and inform the fundamentals of research methods and analytical processes, then no matter how practically relevant our output is to the industry, it will remain derivative and secondary, based on the methodological insights of others. The balancing act between methodological rigour and practical relevance is a difficult one, but not, of course, a balance that has to be struck in every single paper.

Experimental economics and the artificiality of alteration

A neglected critique of social science laboratories alleges that they implement phenomena different to those supposedly under investigation. The critique purports to be conceptual and so invulnerable to a technical solution. I argue that it undermines some economics designs seeking to implement features of real societies, and counsels more modesty in experimental write‐ups. It also constitutes a plausible argument that laboratory economics experiments are necessarily less demonstrative than natural scientific ones. More radical sceptical conclusions are unwarranted.

Environmental and ecological economics in the 21st century: an age adjusted citation analysis of the influential articles, journals, authors and institutions

We investigate the influence of articles, authors, journals and institutions in the field of environmental and ecological economics. We depart from studies that investigated the literature until 2001 and include a time period that has witnessed an enormous increase of importance in the field. We adjust for the age effect given the huge impact of the year of an article's publication on its influence and we show that this adjustment does make a substantial difference — especially for disaggregated units of analysis with diverse age characteristics such as articles or authors. We analyse 6597 studies on environmental and ecological economics published between 2000 and 2009. We provide rankings of the influential articles, authors, journals and institutions and find that Ecological Economics, Energy Economics and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management have the most influential articles, they publish very influential authors and their articles are cited most. The University of Maryland, Resources for the Future, the University of East Anglia and the World Bank appear to be the most influential institutions in the field of environmental and ecological economics.

Evaluation of cumulative externality: environmental economics, oligopoly and the private provision of public goods

This paper evaluates environmental externality when the structure of the externality is cumulative. The evaluation exercise is based on the assumption that the agents in question form conjectural variations. A number of environments are encompassed within this classification and have received due attention in the literature. Each of these heterogeneous environments, however, possesses considerable analytical homogeneity and permit subscription to a general model treatment. These environments include environmental externality, oligopoly and the analysis of the private provision of public goods. We highlight the general analytical approach by focusing on this latter context, in which debate centers around four issues: the existence of free-riding, the extent to which contributions are matched equally across individuals, the nature of conjectures consistent with equilibrium, and the allocative inefficiency of alternative regimes. This paper resolves each of these issues, with the following conclusions: A consistent-conjectures equilibrium exists in the private provision of public goods. It is the monopolistic-conjectures equilibrium. Agents act identically, contributing positive amounts of the public good in an efficient allocation of resources. There is complete matching of contributions among agents, no free-riding, and the allocation is independent of the number of members within the community. Thus the Olson conjecture—that inefficiency is exacerbated by community size—has no foundation in a consistent-conjectures, cumulative-externality, context (212 words).

Determinants of biosecurity behaviour of British cattle and sheep farmers: a behavioural economics analysis

The paper analyses the impact of a priori determinants of biosecurity behaviour of farmers in Great Britain. We use a dataset collected through a stratified telephone survey of 900 cattle and sheep farmers in Great Britain (400 in England and a further 250 in Wales and Scotland respectively) which took place between 25 March 2010 and 18 June 2010. The survey was stratified by farm type, farm size and region. To test the influence of a priori determinants on biosecurity behaviour we used a behavioural economics method, structural equation modelling (SEM) with observed and latent variables. SEM is a statistical technique for testing and estimating causal relationships amongst variables, some of which may be latent using a combination of statistical data and qualitative causal assumptions. Thirteen latent variables were identified and extracted, expressing the behaviour and the underlying determining factors. The variables were: experience, economic factors, organic certification of farm, membership in a cattle/sheep health scheme, perceived usefulness of biosecurity information sources, knowledge about biosecurity measures, perceived importance of specific biosecurity strategies, perceived effect (on farm business in the past five years) of welfare/health regulation, perceived effect of severe outbreaks of animal diseases, attitudes towards livestock biosecurity, attitudes towards animal welfare, influence on decision to apply biosecurity measures and biosecurity behaviour. The SEM model applied on the Great Britain sample has an adequate fit according to the measures of absolute, incremental and parsimonious fit. The results suggest that farmers’ perceived importance of specific biosecurity strategies, organic certification of farm, knowledge about biosecurity measures, attitudes towards animal welfare, perceived usefulness of biosecurity information sources, perceived effect on business during the past five years of severe outbreaks of animal diseases, membership in a cattle/sheep health scheme, attitudes towards livestock biosecurity, influence on decision to apply biosecurity measures, experience and economic factors are significantly influencing behaviour (overall explaining 64% of the variance in behaviour).

The transaction cost economics theory of the family firm: family-based human asset specificity and the bifurcation bias

We develop a transaction cost economics theory of the family firm, building upon the concepts of family-based asset specificity, bounded rationality, and bounded reliability. We argue that the prosperity and survival of family firms depend on the absence of a dysfunctional bifurcation bias. The bifurcation bias is an expression of bounded reliability, reflected in the de facto asymmetric treatment of family vs. nonfamily assets (especially human assets). We propose that absence of bifurcation bias is critical to fostering reliability in family business functioning. Our study ends the unproductive divide between the agency and stewardship perspectives of the family firm, which offer conflicting accounts of this firm type's functioning. We show that the predictions of the agency and stewardship perspectives can be usefully reconciled when focusing on how family firms address the bifurcation bias or fail to do so.

Environmental and ecological economics in the 21st century: an age adjusted citation analysis of the most influential articles, journals, authors and institutions

We investigate the influence of articles, authors, journals and institutions in the field of environmental and ecological economics. We depart from studies that investigated the literature until 2001 and include a time period that has witnessed an enormous increase of importance in the field. We adjust for the age effect given the huge impact of the year of an article's publication on its influence and we show that this adjustment does make a substantial difference — especially for disaggregated units of analysis with diverse age characteristics such as articles or authors. We analyse 6597 studies on environmental and ecological economics published between 2000 and 2009. We provide rankings of the influential articles, authors, journals and institutions and find that Ecological Economics, Energy Economics and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management have the most influential articles, they publish very influential authors and their articles are cited most. The University of Maryland, Resources for the Future, the University of East Anglia and the World Bank appear to be the most influential institutions in the field of environmental and ecological economics.

Voting rights of refugees

The book develops a novel legal argument about the voting rights of recognised 1951 Geneva Convention Refugees. The main normative contention is that such refugees should have the right to vote in the political community where they reside, assuming that the political community is a democracy and that its citizens have the right to vote. The basis of this contention is that the right to political participation in some political community is a basic right from the point of view of dignity and the protection of one’s interests. Due to their unique political predicament, 1951 Geneva Convention Refugees are a special category of non-citizen residents. They are unable to participate in elections of their state of origin, do not enjoy its diplomatic protection and consular assistance abroad, and – most fundamentally – are unable or unwilling, owing to a well-founded fear of persecution, to return to it; thus, they are in limbo for a potentially protracted period. Refugees, too, deserve to have a place in the world in the Arendtian sense, where their opinions are significant and their actions are effective. Their state of asylum is, for the time being, the only community in which there is any realistic prospect of political participation on their part.