Corporate governance and related party transactions research:an assessment of theories and methodologies

This paper critically evaluates the paradigm, theory, and methodology that dominate research on related party transactions (RPTs). RPTs have been debated in the literature whether they are a facet of conflict of interest between major and minor shareholders or they are normal efficient transactions that help the firms to achieve asset utilization. Literature has been widely interested in studying the association between corporate governance and RPTs especially that according to the agency theory it is assumed that corporate governance as a monitoring tool should impede the negative consequences of RPTs and ensure they are conducted to achieve better asset utilization.

Failure to relaunch? The United States, nuclear North Korea, and the future of the six-party talks

During the past twenty years, Washington has oscillated between tentative engagement with Pyongyang under the Clinton administration and isolation and multilateralism under the Bush administration. With the Obama administration almost nearing its four-year tenure, the Six-Party Talks have stalled and North Korea's multiple attacks on the South in 2010 have created new instabilities. Why so little results despite promises of a radical departure away from the Axis of Evil rhetoric and hard-line politics? This paper suggests that the Obama administration has utilized approaches that no longer fit current circumstances and hence failed to create an original, coherent and effective foreign policy. © 2012 McFarland & Company, Inc.

Caste, class and Trade Unionism in India

The caste system in India and its exploitative nature has been well researched (Siddique 2011 Gupta 2000). However, the role of caste in Indian employment relations and in particular its role in the labor movement in India is yet to be fully explored. The primary aim of this paper is to examine the rise of caste- based trade unions in India over the past decade. Specifically, we aim to examine why the lower-caste workers (historically treated as untouchables, referred to as ‘Dalits’and officially designated as Scheduled Caste and Tribes) are leaving established trade unions to organize their own unions along caste lines? While fragmentation of trade unions is a well-known phenomenon both in India and in the Western World (Shyam Sundar 2015; Connolly et al. 2014), the rise of caste based trade unions is a relatively new phenomenon which is yet to be fully explored. Caste based trade unionism appears to be counter-intuitive when the conventional logic suggests that unions are class based collective institutions which represent the interest of the working classes (Ramaswamy 1976). The Indian trade union movement has historically been fragmented along political ideological lines ranging from moderate unions affiliated to the Congress Party to the militant unions affiliated to the Communist and Socialist parties. However, the rise of caste-based trade unions of the lower caste workers is a relatively new phenomenon. Our findings from surveys and interviews with mainstream unions and caste-based trade unions suggest that the caste-based trade unions are unique in at least three ways. First, these unions are breaking away from well-established radical and militant union federations such as those affiliated to the Communist and Socialist parties. Second, these unions are predominantly organized on caste identities and not occupational identities or political ideologies. Third in unionized workplaces, lower caste workers are forming their own separate unions along caste lines with membership restricted only to workers of their own caste instead of joining the mainstream unions where present. We examine these issues using the analytical framework of Paulo Freire (1970) – dialogics, praxis and cultural oppression and relate it with the insights from comparative politics which examine the role of actors & their interests within institutions (Peters 2011).

A költségvetési korlát megkeményítése a posztszocialista országokban = Hardening of the budget constraint in the post-socialist countries

A költségvetési korlát megkeményítése nem egyforma mértékben ment végbe minden posztszocialista gazdaságban. Egyes országokban messzire jutottak ebben a tekintetben, másokban viszont alig változott az indulóállapot. A tanulmány áttekinti a költségvetési korlát puhaságának különböző megnyilvánulásait: az állami támogatásokat, a puha adózást, a nem teljesítő bankkölcsönöket, a vállalatközi tartozások felgyülemlését és a kifizetetlen béreket. A jelenséget sokféle tényező okozza, amelyek többnyire együttesen jelentkeznek. Az állami tulajdon fenntartása kedvez a puha költségvetési szindróma megrögződésének, a privatizálás elősegíti a keményítést, de nem elégséges feltétele a kemény korlát érvényesítésének. Ehhez megfelelő politikai, jogi és gazdasági környezetet kell céltudatosan kialakítani. A posztszocialista átmenet kezdetén sokan azt hitték, hogy a hatékony piacgazdaság létrehozásához elegendő lesz megvalósítani a liberalizáció, privatizáció és stabilizáció "szentháromságát". Mára már kiderült, hogy a költségvetési korlát megkeményítése az említett három feladattal egyenrangúan fontos. Ahol ez nem valósul meg (például Oroszország), ott a privatizáció nem hozza meg a várt eredményt. ___________________ The budget constraint has not hardened to equal degrees in the various post-socialist countries. In some of them, a great deal has been done in this respect, while in others there has been hardly any change from the initial state. This study surveys the typical manifestations of softness of the budget constraint, such as state subsidies, soft taxation, non-performing loans, the accumulation of trade arrears between firms, and the build-up of wage arrears. Softness of the budget constraint is caused by several factors that tend to act in combination. Thus retention of state ownership helps to preserve the soft budget-constraint syndrome, while privatization encourages the budget constraint to harden, although it does not form a sufficient condition for it to happen. Purposeful development of the requisite political, legal and economic conditions is also required. It was widely maintained at the outset of the post-socialist transition that the 'Holy Trinity' of liberalization, privatization and stabilization would suffice to produce an efficient market economy. Since then, it has become clear that hardening the budget constraint needs to be given equal priority with these. Otherwise, the effects of privatization will fall short of expectations, as they have in Russia, for example.

Vállalati magatartás és túlélési esélyek a posztszocialista átmenetgazdaságban (Corporate behaviour and chances of survival in a post-socialist transitional economy)

A tanulmányban paneladatokra támaszkodva vizsgáljuk a hazai feldolgozóipari vállalkozások középtávú túlélési esélyeit befolyásoló tényezőket. A kutatás során az 1993-ban mintába került cégekhez tértünk vissza 2000-ben. Az adatok szerint az ágazat, a létszám és a kapacitáskihasználtság mellett a vezetői magatartás és a vállalati stratégia is érdemben befolyásolta a vállalatok fennmaradási esélyeit. Azok a szervezetek, amelyekben a vezetők 1993-ban úgy vélekedtek, hogy a gazdaságban a normaszegő magatartás sikerre számíthat, az átlagosnál kisebb valószínűséggel maradtak életben az évtized végére. Azok a vállalatok, amelyeknek vezetői a vizsgálat elején sikeresnek tartották cégüket, illetve amelyek már 1993-ban is inkább megoldó jellegű válságmenedzselési eszközöket alkalmaztak, nagyobb arányban maradtak fenn, mint azok, amelyek halasztó jellegű eszközökkel próbáltak úrrá lenni a transzformációs visszaesés okozta krízisen. ________ The study uses panel data to examine the factor affected medium-term changes in the chances of survival among Hungarian manufacturing firms. The researchers revisited in 2000 firms surveyed in a 1993 sample. The figures show firms survival chances vary essentially not only by industry, size of labour force and utilization of capacity, but according to managerial behaviour and corporate strategy. Those whose managers be-lieved in 1993 that behaviour breaching accepted norms would succeed in the economy had a lower than average likelihood of surviving until the end of the decade. The survival rate was higher among those whose managers thought they would be successful or were already applying crisis-management techniques of a remedial nature in 1993, than among those using delaying tactics to tackle a crisis caused by the transformational recession.

From Anti-equilibrium to The Socialist System and Beyond

This essay attempts to understand János Kornai’s works from a political economy perspective. It argues that Kornai has significantly contributed to the formation of a new paradigm of political economy. The main endeavor of Kornai has been the combination of analytical concepts of economics with the empirical description of real economies. After a certain period of theoretical experimentation János Kornai formulated his research program that can be called the shortage economy explanation of the socialist system. The Economics of Shortage and The Socialist System have created a new theoretical paradigm in a framework in which it has become possible to establish a connection between the analytical and empirical, universal and historical aspects of the theory studying the socialist system as a real economic entity. János Kornai has built his analysis of the socialist system on the primary role of politics in the creation of economic institutions. In his present work on capitalism he has extended this thesis to the capitalist system. This seems to be an important contribution of his to a new political economy paradigm that is just in the process of formation.

Minsk and Budapest, the two capital cities. Selected studies of post-socialist urban geography and ecological problems of urban areas

The official cooperation between the Hungarian and the Belarusian geography began to be outlined in a sunny afternoon of June 2010 in the Minsk building of the Geographic Faculty of the Belarusian State University, four years ago. Then we reviewed the potential frames of cooperation with Professor Ekaterina Antipova. It was supported by the academican Károly Kocsis, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, director of the Geographical Research Institute, and we could also win the support of the dean Ivan Pirozhnik and the academician Vladimir Loginov from the Belarusian State University and the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, respectively. This informal cooperation became official in the autumn of 2010 in the frame of the Academic Mobility Agreement Project between the Hungarian and the Belarusian academies of sciences. Since then several publications have appeared about Hungary and Belarus in the geographic journals of both countries, however, this is the first, long awaited, significant common publication. Besides the project-based co-operations like e. g. the EastMig (www.eastmig.mtafki.hu) and the ReSEP-CEE (www.mtafki.hu/ReSEP_CEE_Be.html) supported by the Visegrad Fund, a vivid student exchange program was also launched from the autumn of 2010 between the Geographic Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the Geographic Faculty of the Belarusian State University with the scholarship program of the Visegrad Fund. Later the Department of Economic Geography of the Corvinus University of Budapest, headed by István Tózsa became also an active partner of the cooperation. The publishing expenses of this book are also fully financed by the Department of Economic Geography.

Determinants and effects of electoral party coalitions: The case of Brazil

Since the 1985 return to democracy, Brazilian politicians have resorted to vote-pooling arrangements to elect representatives. A puzzle thus presents itself: What drives parties to join these electoral cartels? The dissertation unraveled the incentives party elites have to participate in coalitions under a presidencialist system of government. I also investigated the effect of electoral coalitions on congressional representation. I applied a model of binary outcomes and relied on standard deviations to assess the ideological homogeneity/heterogeneity of electoral coalitions. I also calculated the Index of Disproportionality to measure the gaps between the proportion of votes and seats received by all parties in Brazil with and without electoral coalitions. Finally, I assessed the effects of the electoral formula on proportionality. An unexpected exogenous factor resulted crucial in explaining proportional electoral coalition building: The district's majoritarian election for governor. In each district, political actors often synchronize coalition partners to maximize winning results while minimizing electoral efforts.

Voting with their feet: Migration, partisanship, and party-safe elections in Florida

Political scientists have long noted that Congressional elections are often uncompetitive, often extremely so. Many scholars argue that the cause lies in the partisan redistricting of Congressional districts, or “gerrymandering”. Other scholars emphasize polarization created by a fragmented news media, or the candidate choices made by a more ideological primary electorate. All these explanations identify the cause of party-safe elections in institutions of various kinds. This dissertation, by contrast, presents a structural explanation of uncompetitive elections. My theory is that population composition and patterns of migration are significant causes and predictors of election results in Florida. I test this theory empirically by comparing the predictions from four hypotheses against aggregate data, using the county as the unit of analysis. The first hypothesis is that Florida can be divided into clearly distinguishable, persistent partisan sections. This hypothesis is confirmed. The second hypothesis is that Florida voters have become increasingly partisan over time. This hypothesis is confirmed. The third hypothesis is that the degree of migration into a county predicts how that county will vote. This hypothesis is partially confirmed, for the migration effect appears to have waned over time. The last hypothesis is that the degree of religiosity of a county population is a predictor of how that county will vote. This hypothesis is also supported by the results of statistical analysis. By identifying the structural causes of party-safe elections, this dissertation not only broadens our understanding of elections in Florida, but also sheds light on the current polarization in American politics.

Casino Drink Policies: Limiting Third-Party Liability

In their efforts to provide an atmosphere or hospitality to their casino customers, many operators will provide complimentary alcoholic beverage service. This practice is fraught with liability, particularly in venues outside of Nevada. Conscientious operators must take every precaution to mitigate the possibility of lawsuit.

Ballots for Equality: An Approach to the Radical Tradition in U.S. Electoral Politics

Posing radical challenges to structural inequality is the defining quality of the Left. What role electoral politics might play in such processes is a dilemma of radical politics, the contours of which vary by historical and national contexts. For the U.S. Left there is a distinctive aspect of the dilemma directly related to the failure of a "Left" party of even the most moderate social democratic type to take root, creating a seemingly never ending debate over the value if any of "third party" progressive organizing. This debate is current, as illustrated by three divergent approaches; independent left electoral politics (Socialist Alternative), organizing within the less conservative of the dominant parties (Progressive Democrats of America), and a social movement focus outside the electoral process (Occupy Movement). The present day examples of alternative Left strategies noted here in passing are but three of many such specific organizational options for progressive politics. This article does not seek to advocate for any one of these options to the exclusion of the others but rather seeks to provide historical perspective.

Explaining Interest Group Interactions with Party Group Members in the European Parliament : Dominant Party Groups and Coalition Formation

Peer reviewed