Making business in the open: coping with economic and institutional risk and insecurity in the Kafue flats, Zambia

This paper deals with the difference between risk and insecurity from an anthropological perspective using a critical New Institutionalist approach. Risk refers to the ability to reduce undesirable outcomes, based on a range of information actors have on possible outcomes; insecurity refers to the lack of this information. With regard to the neo-liberal setting of a resource rich area in Zambia, Central Africa, local actors – men and women – face risk and insecurity in market constellations between rural and urban areas. They attempt to cope with risk using technical means and diversification of livelihood strategies. But as common-pool resources have been transformed from common property institutions to open access, also leading to unpredictability of competitors and partners in “free” markets, actors rely on magic options to reduce insecurity and transform it into risk-assessing strategies as an adaptation to modern times. Keywords: Risk, insecurity, institutional change, neo-liberal market, common pool resources, livelihood strategies, magic, Zambia.

Capitalisation of Experiences of the Swiss Support to Sustainable Management of Natural Resources (SMNR) in Bulgaria

Following the collapse of the communist regime in 1989, Bulgaria has undergone dramatic political, economic and social transformations. The transition process of the past two decades was characterized by several reforms to support democratisation of the political system and the functioning of a free-market economy. Since 1992, Switzerland has been active in Bulgaria providing assistance to the transition process, with support to Sustainable Management of Natural Resources (SMNR) starting in 1995. The SMNR Capitalisation of Experiences (CapEx) took place between March and September 2007, in the context of SDC phasing out its programmes in Bulgaria by the end of 2007 due to the country’s accession to the European Union. The CapEx exercise has culminated in the identification of 17 lessons learned. In the view of the CapEx team, many of these lessons are relevant for countries that are in the process of joining the EU, facing similar democratisation challenges as Bulgaria. Overall, the Swiss SMNR projects have been effective entry points to support areas that are crucial to democratic transitions, namely participation in public goods management, decentralisation, human capacity development in research and management, and preparation for EU membership. The specificity of the Swiss support stems from an approach that combines a long-term commitment with a clear thematic focus (forestry, biodiversity conservation and organic agriculture). The multistakeholder approach and diversification of support between local, regional and national levels are also important elements that contributed to make a difference in relation to other donors supporting the Bulgarian transition. At the institutional level, there are a number of challenges where the contribution of SMNR activities was only modest, namely improving the legal framework and creating more transparency and accountability, both of which are time and resource-consuming processes. In addition, the emergence of competent and sustainable non-government organisations (NGOs) is a complex process that requires support to membership based organisations, a challenge that was hardly met in the case of SMNR. Finally, reform of government institutions involved in management of natural resources is difficult to achieve via project support only, as it requires leverage and commitment at the level of policy dialogue. At the programme management level, the CapEx team notes that corruption was not systematically addressed in SMNR projects, indicating that more attention should be given to this issue at the outset of any new project.

Coercive, Normative, and Mimetic Influences on the Assimilation of BCM in Outsourcing Relationships

Today many business processes are based on IT systems. These systems are exposed to different threats, which may lead to failures of critical business pro-cesses. Thus, enterprises prepare themselves against threats and failures of critical IT systems by means of Business Continuity Management (BCM). The phe-nomenon of outsourcing introduces a new dimension to BCM. In an outsourcing relationship the client organization is still responsible for the continuity of its processes but does not have full control over the implemented business continuity measures. In this paper we build a research model based on institutional and assimilation theories to describe and explain how and why BCM is assimilated in outsourcing relationships. In our case studies we found evidence that primarily coercive and normative pressures influence the assimilation of BCM in outsourcing relationships and support the explanation of variation across enterprises. Mimetic pressures seem to influence the assimilation but do not explain variations.

Performance Evaluation of the New Connecticut Leading Employment Index Using Lead Profiles and BVAR Models

Dua and Miller (1996) created leading and coincident employment indexes for the state of Connecticut, following Moore's (1981) work at the national level. The performance of the Dua-Miller indexes following the recession of the early 1990s fell short of expectations. This paper performs two tasks. First, it describes the process of revising the Connecticut Coincident and Leading Employment Indexes. Second, it analyzes the statistical properties and performance of the new indexes by comparing the lead profiles of the new and old indexes as well as their out-of-sample forecasting performance, using the Bayesian Vector Autoregressive (BVAR) method. The new indexes show improved performance in dating employment cycle chronologies. The lead profile test demonstrates that superiority in a rigorous, non-parametric statistic fashion. The mixed evidence on the BVAR forecasting experiments illustrates the truth in the Granger and Newbold (1986) caution that leading indexes properly predict cycle turning points and do not necessarily provide accurate forecasts except at turning points, a view that our results support.

Consumption asymmetry and the stock market: New evidence through a threshold adjustment model

This paper investigates whether stock market wealth affects real consumption asymmetrically through a threshold adjustment model. The empirical findings for the US show that wealth produces an asymmetric effect on real consumption, with negative 'news' affecting consumption less than positive 'news.' Thus, policy makers may want to focus more attention on preventing asset 'bubbles' than on responding to negative asset shocks.

A Brief History of Affordable Housing Cooperatives in the United States

For over 75 years housing cooperatives have been a source of affordable housing. Currently, the 376,000 dwelling units of affordable cooperatives is equivalent to seventeen percent of the rent reduction units owned by publichousing authorities. Understanding that affordable cooperatives have been developed under varying historical circumstances provides insights on how they could play a role in the future supply of affordable housing. The history of affordable co-ops starts during the 1920s and after World War II with the ethnic, union, and New York government financed co-ops. Through the 1960s and the early 1970s cooperatives were financed by various federal direct assistance programs. Since the late 1970s co-ops have been sponsored by nonprofit organizations and by federal and municipal government privatization programs. A workable institutional structure for affordable cooperatives has developed as a result of this historical evolution.

A New Economic Analysis of the American Revolution

We offer an analysis of the American Revolution in which actors are modeled as choosing the sovereign organization that maximizes their net expected benefits. Benefits of secession derive from satisfaction of greed and settlement of grievance. Costs derive from the cost of civil war and lost benefit of Empire membership. When expected net benefits are positive for both secessionists and the Empire civil war ensues, otherwise it is settled or never begins in the first place. The novelty of our discussion is to show how diverse economic and non-economic factors (such as pamphleteering by Thomas Paine and the morale of the Revolutionary forces) can be integrated into a single economic model.

The Effects of Credit Risk on Dynamic Portfolio Management: A New Computational Approach

The study investigates the role of credit risk in a continuous time stochastic asset allocation model, since the traditional dynamic framework does not provide credit risk flexibility. The general model of the study extends the traditional dynamic efficiency framework by explicitly deriving the optimal value function for the infinite horizon stochastic control problem via a weighted volatility measure of market and credit risk. The model's optimal strategy was then compared to that obtained from a benchmark Markowitz-type dynamic optimization framework to determine which specification adequately reflects the optimal terminal investment returns and strategy under credit and market risks. The paper shows that an investor's optimal terminal return is lower than typically indicated under the traditional mean-variance framework during periods of elevated credit risk. Hence I conclude that, while the traditional dynamic mean-variance approach may indicate the ideal, in the presence of credit-risk it does not accurately reflect the observed optimal returns, terminal wealth and portfolio selection strategies.

Institutional Infrastructure to Support 'Super Growth' in Kenya: Governance Thresholds, Reversion Rates and Economic Development

Kenya Growth Vision 2030 proposes policy and institutional reforms that make it possible for the country to achieve development status of a middle income country by 2030. This paper outlines the institutional framework necessary to achieve ÈSuper Growth,É which describes the character of growth required to meet targets stipulated in the Vision. The paper provides evidence confirming the importance of improving the quality of governance to the achievement of the Vision. The paper also demonstrates that the country is characterized by a high probability of reverting to poor governance. It is argued that, to achieve super growth, the country must attain an institutional tipping point which associates with low reversion rates to weaker institutions. The paper provides suggestions for institutional reforms that result in the achievement of an institutional tipping point and super growth.