Law and economics scholarship has contributed much to our understanding of both the nature of intellectual property rights generally and the features of individual intellectual property regimes. Indeed it is hard to imagine a field other than antitrust law that is so explicitly governed by economic thinking. In authorizing the copyright and patent systems, Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution expressly incorporates a social welfare imperative as the basis for its grant of power.1 Certainly economists and economically oriented legal academics have given the field the attention it is due. I am far from being a sophisticated economic thinker, although I admire those who are and the insights they have brought to my understanding of what is at stake in intellectual property. My comments are more practical in nature. They involve the tension that arises throughout the law of intellectual property and unfair competition between protection of intellectual achievement and public access to intellectual products. This tension is reflected in the central questions: When are intellectual property rights appropriate and what is their proper scope? Economics seems to provide an apt description but an inadequate basis for answering these questions. And there lies, in my view, one of the reasons for the trend throughout intellectual property to enlarge property rights at the expense of access. For those of us who deem this trend problematic, economic analysis seems increasingly unhelpful in formulating a response protective of the public domain. The tension between protection and access pervades intellectual property and unfair competition law. The casebook Ed Kitch and I coauthored uses it as one of the themes that tie the disparate chapters of the book together.2 Protection or access is at issue whether the case involves a local barber who wants an exclusive property interest in the barbering business of Howard Lake, Minnesota,3 or the promisee of a contract who claims to have a property interest in the future performance of the promissor,4 or the firm that claims a property interest in the firm's investment in the human capital of its workers,5 or the trademark owner who asserts a property right over portions of the English language,6 or the celebrity who seeks to capture gains from his or her celebrity status,7 or the more traditional cases involving constitutionally recognized authors and inventors. There should be little doubt that the trend throughout intellectual property and unfair competition is toward greater protection and diminished access.8 The Digital Millennium Copyright Act9 is a notorious example of a protectionist advance, as is the apparent willingness of the Patent and Trademark Office and the Federal Circuit to expand the realm of patent protection.10 But the trend is noticeable elsewhere as well. The adoption of the trademark dilution cause of action11 and the expanding protection against cybersquatters12 have refocused trademark law away from its traditional function of prevention of consumer confusion toward one that confers substantial property rights on trademark owners. 13 The protection of trade dress without proof of secondary meaning also favors property rights over rights of access.14 A similar rule applied to product designs and configurations would have created an even more damaging effect on competition, but the Supreme Court happily required proof of actual distinctiveness. 15 The classic misappropriation doctrine announced in International News Service v. Associated Press represents the power of the protectionist rhetoric over substance.16 The Restatement (Third) of Unfair Competition recognizes that the case offers little in terms of a coherent principle and has been of only marginal significance.17 Proponents of access may take heart from the doctrine's limited application, and yet it is currently asserted as an appropriate model in defense of data base protection18 and it continues to attract judicial adherents. …
Recent comparative education policy studies show that even though there seems to be similar patterns and trends in higher education reforms in East Asian societies, the recently initiated higher education reforms have had very diverse agendas. Thus, the considerable convergence of policy rhetoric and general policy objectives may not satisfactorily explain the complicated processes of changes and the dynamic interactions between global, regional and local forces that shape education policy-making in individual countries. This article discusses globalization effects on national policy, with particular reference to how the higher education sector in Taiwan has transformed itself under the global tide of marketization and decentralization. There are a lot of changes similar to both higher education in Taiwan and that of elsewhere, which suggests that Taiwan's higher education has been affected by the trends of globalization. But before we jump to this conclusion, maybe we should also bear in mind an alternative hypothesis that local factors are crucial and determining factors for change. The core of the article is to examine the ways and strategies the Taiwan Government has adopted to reform its higher education systems in response to the changing local socio-economic political context and regional-global environments, with a particular focus on provision, regulation and financing.
OBJECTIVE: The results of an evaluative longitudinal study, which identified the effects of health care decentralization on health financing in Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru are presented in this article. METHODS: The methodology had two main phases. In the first, secondary sources of data and documents were analyzed with the following variables: type of decentralization implemented, source of financing, funds for financing, providers, final use of resources, mechanisms for resource allocation. In the second phase, primary data were collected by a survey of key personnel in the health sector. RESULTS: Results of the comparative analysis are presented, showing the changes implemented in the three countries, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each country in matters of financing and decentralization. CONCLUSIONS: The main financing changes implemented and quantitative trends with respect to the five financing indicators are presented as a methodological tool to implement corrections and adjustments in health financing.
The international character of today’s most pressing environmental problems has become a key challenge for environmental policy making. As regulation by a supranational authority is not a realistic option at present, policymakers have to rely on decentralized approaches to the management of international environmental resources. This study combines two core dimensions of international environmental policy: the traditional search for cost-effective policy instruments and the creation of incentives for voluntary cooperation among sovereign nations. The analysis offers some clear-cut policy recommendations for the design of environmental treaties and for the further development of existing international institutions to protect the global environment.
In 1798, there appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society a paper by James Wood, purporting to prove the fundamental theorem of algebra, to the effect that every non-constant polynomial with real coefficients has at least one real or complex zero. Since the first generally accepted proof of this result was given by Gauss in 1799, Wood's paper deserves careful examination. After giving a brief outline of Wood's career, I describe the argument of his paper. His proof turns out to be incomplete as it stands, but it contains an original idea, which was to be used later, in the same context, by von Staudt, Gordan and others, without knowledge of Wood's work. After putting Wood's work in context, I conclude by showing how his idea can be used to prove the complex form of the fundamental theorem of algebra, stating that every non-constant polynomial with complex coefficients has at least one zero in the complex field.
The cult of Joan of Arc has its roots in the political and social upheavals of fin de siecle France, during the same time period when film as a medium is birthed in Lyon by the Lumiere brothers. (1) The events themselves are coincidental, though film will quickly be used at the service of myth-making. Hailed by the French Right as the embodiment of the true French state, Joan of Arc's recreated legend galvanized a generation of artists who joined the growing chorus of Catholics demanding the canonization of Joan. Called Blessed by 1909, Joan became Saint Joan in 1920, a year after the end of the Great War and the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and almost five hundred years after her death. This study examines the role of literature and film in determining Joan's place in history and popular culture. Until the nineteenth century when the Joan explosion manifested itself relatively few writers had chosen Joan as their subject. In 1429, two years before Joan's death at the stake, Christine de Pizan celebrated her life and exploits in her Ditie de Jehanne d,Arc. (2) As Maureen Quilligan points out, hers is the only signed poem written during Jehanne d'Arc's lifetime explicitly to celebrate her miraculous deliverance of France. Christine herself saw Jehanne as proof of the rightness of her programmatic argument for the divine favor God had shown to women. (3) Quilligan argues that Christine's prophetic portrait of Joan accorded the Maid of Orleans with a legitimate female authority: It cannot be entirely an accident then that the unique and singular female writer in late medieval France should so overlap the advent of a singular female warrior; although it is not possible to prove such things it does make sense to suppose that Christine's arguments, so highly visible to all court members, may have helped prepare them to accept a woman's authority. Her constant retelling of the Amazon myth, arguing for their legitimate domain in a martial realm in text after text, could very well have prepared the culture at court to see a woman warrior as something other than a monster. And this preparation would not have hurt Jehanne's chances for being well received by that court. (280) (4) A less flattering British portrait was presented on the stage in 1590 in Shakespeare's Henry VI, in which Joan's dialogue is replete with double entendres and in which there is no doubt that Joan's exploits are the result of a satanic pact. (5) Almost one hundred and fifty years would elapse before Voltaire would take up Joan's story for his poem La Pucelle d'Orleans (1762). Voltaire's pen puts Joan's story at the service of his anticlericalism, and reduces her to a rustic incarnation with all too human lusts that must be sublimated for the cause of the state. Paradoxically, with the exception of Voltaire and a play Jeanne d'Arc a Orleans by Rodolphe Kreutzer performed at the Theatre des Italiens in Paris in 1790, the century of revolution is almost silent in its evocation of Joan, and completely silent in its evocation of Joan as a symbol for the creation of the new French state, preferring instead to identify Liberty with the image of Marianne. Joan's transformation into the Romantic imagination began with Friedrich Schiller's 1801 La Pucelle d'Orleans, in which a tormented Joan struggles with her love for the British general Lionel and her duties to the mission given to her by the Virgin Mary. Schiller presents a conflicted Joan whose femininity is renounced at the expense of political triumph, but not without bitterness. It would this version of the Joan story that Tchaikovsky would later select for his 1881 opera La Pucelle d'Orleans, first presented at the Theatre Marie in Saint Petersburg. Jules Quicherat's monumental five-volume compilation (1841-1845) of the complete texts of Joan's trial of Condemnation and Nullification written in Latin and Old French appeared at a time when France was once again in search of its political soul. …
In this paper, a model of the automatic control of trains was researched. To research the problem, fuzzy control, predictive control and computer simulation technology were applied. The speed of the train and the comfort level were defined as evaluation functions, and the tactic used was rolling optimization.
Industrial Technology and Control Systems
Power Systems and Technologies
Advanced Computational Techniques and Applications
Stefan G. Koeberle, Lars M. Sondergaard, Jamie Vazquez-Caro, Bill McLeary · 5 authors
The report assesses the performance of Thailand's fiscal institutions, in responding to the pressures of the economic crisis, and its likely performance in meeting the challenges of the new Constitution, and in modernizing the public sector. It builds on the analysis conducted to design the Government's Public Sector Management Reform Program, and lays the foundation for reform options. By examining policy responses, identifying institutional shortcomings, and reviewing challenges for fiscal policy and administration during the economic crisis, lessons are drawn from its experience, focusing attention on selective issues, such as human resource management, and tax policy reforms, while serving as a practical compendium of reforms currently underway, and suggesting priorities for further reform. The country's public expenditures and development outcomes are examined, with special attention on expenditure planning and fiscal risk management, identifying the foundation for fiscal decentralization, and its reform strategy.
This article describes problems of education efficiency, finance, and management in the Kyrgyz Republic. It concentrates on the process of decentralization which has been used as a common tactic of central! authorities to offload many fiscal and managerial responsible onto local authorities. It describes how the diversification of finance has created many new problems and new distortions. And it describes the impact on equity from the managerial and governance changes.
From an international perspective, U.S. health policymaking is quite distinctive. Other economically advanced nations face the same problems of cost, access, and quality, but none use policymaking structures that resemble ours. To a great extent, the same American “exceptionalism” is evident when analyzing the values that motivate health policymakers. The American people have never truly resolved for themselves the fundamental question that must be considered when directing the objectives of health policies: Is American healthcare a business, a public service, or something in between? Most other wealthy nations have concluded that healthcare is primarily a public function, and have established systems with objectives directly or indirectly set by government and primarily paid for with tax dollars. In contrast, the United States maintains a mixed public-private sector system with no centralized policymaking or financing organization.1 Certainly, the resulting decentralization and flexibility in American health services has its advantages. On the other hand, many important financing and service questions are never resolved, since their solution would require ultimate priority setting by policymakers and, more broadly, by the American people. Irresolution as to whether healthcare is first and foremost a business or a public service is at the heart of major contemporary public policy problems. The following are two important examples. Academic health centers (AMCs) and the public goods of health education and research. Since the beginning of the 1980s, federal policymakers have generally encouraged competition between health providers, with the reasonable expectation that such competition would limit cost increases, encourage the development of a customer (or at least payer) service orientation, and lead to innovations in service delivery. This approach has had positive results in terms of reduced cost inflation and innovative service delivery methods. However, most health industry reform and innovation relies on certain “public goods” being present in the system as a whole. Just as all of us assume that we will have clean air and water as we live and do business, healthcare providers, when engaging in marketplace competition, assume that adequate numbers of trained health professionals will be available to staff their organizations. They also assume that a steady stream of technological advances will make state-of-the-art health services possible. Finally, since society seems to feel that all of its citizens deserve at least a survival level of health services, they have further assumed that other institutions, primarily public facilities, will provide services to those who cannot pay for them. But nongovernmental healthcare providers are not willing to directly pay much for these “public goods.” By and large, they simply expect that public institutions, particularly academic medical centers (AMCs), will provide these goods while they engage in the more lucrative business of market-based health services. However, AMCs have not been provided immunity from the cost pressures resulting from treating healthcare like a “business.” They are told to shape up and compete like other health providers in the marketplace, but they are also told to provide educated health professionals and research products to their competitors, and to take nonpaying patients off their competitors' hands. The funding that they need to do this cannot come primarily from their patients (customers), since a high proportion of them are uninsured and pay little or nothing for the health services. Other traditional sources of funding, including state appropriations, a “disproportionate share” from Medicare, and cost-shifting of uninsured care services to paying patients, are rapidly drying up. Employers paying for the care of their workforce will not pay for others who have no money, nor will they pay more for services because those providing them are also doing research and educating future health professionals. Therefore, most AMCs simply cannot compete in the marketplace. Even if the centers were run at peak efficiency (which they are not), they could not provide services at the prices offered by non-AMC hospitals, clinics, and physician group practices. Are AMCs businesses? If so, they probably cannot succeed as currently structured, because they are forced to provide unprofitable products like education, research, and “free” care. Are AMCs public services, providing unreimbursed health services, education, and research for the healthcare sector as a whole? If so, they cannot properly do their job if they are forced to compete with non-AMCs for survival, because they cannot meet marketplace prices without seriously damaging their educational, research, or service outreach missions. Medicare—A public institution to guarantee health equity for seniors, or a funding mechanism to provide marketplace choice for seniors? Viewed in terms of its original objectives—to reduce medical poverty for seniors—Medicare has been a major public policy success. In some ways it has been too successful. The open-ended commitment to services, along with the “graying of America” and healthcare technological advances, have led to major financing problems for Medicare. Quite properly, the federal government has begun to tighten Medicare's financial spigots. European nations, with publicly run and financed health systems, face the same problems, and can respond quite decisively. To elderly pensioners and their health service providers, European policymakers usually claim that they are doing as well as they can, and will provide more funding in the future, but must balance current public needs with available resources. No European would argue that this is ideal, but most would agree that public policymakers do have to make difficult tradeoffs.2 In the United States, however, healthcare providers are not charged with serving the national interest in carefully providing a public good. Rather, they are called upon to meet consumer demands in an evolving marketplace. Medicare is not a national health service. It is a complex system of writing and disbursing checks to providers for specified services to defined clients. On the one hand, the program is supposed to provide healthcare equality to seniors, so it has nationally defined benefits and prohibits balance billing. On the other hand, it does not take responsibility for providing the services themselves—that would be interfering with the marketplace. In fact, in recent years, Medicare Part C has been created to enhance the role of consumer choice in the marketplace. As Medicare has developed, this conflict—fulfilling a national mandate through the “business” of healthcare—has resulted in the creation of incredibly complicated payment guidelines. Providers have to devote large portions of their resources not to health services, but to Medicare “compliance.” They are also subject to progressively expansive federal mandates (such as the adoption of computerized patient records suitable for uploading into national databases for research purposes) that force them to restructure their organizations. Their consumers now supposedly have greater flexibility and choice, but that choice cannot entail paying more for any particular service; healthcare providers must follow detailed reimbursement schedules. At least, one supposes, U.S. providers can be thankful that they are in the “private” sector, unlike their unfortunate European counterparts, who have lost their independence to “big government” and “socialized medicine.” Is Medicare supposed to be a public commitment to healthcare equality for seniors? Then, as currently designed, it cannot guarantee equal services, since it lacks the direct controls over service provision found in (say) the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. Or is Medicare supposed to be a generous subsidy to the elderly so that they can obtain their healthcare in the marketplace? Then it is extremely inefficient, for it gives the money to the providers (along with damaging and cumbersome regulatory oversight) rather than empowering the senior “customers” to buy their own services (at whatever prices they negotiate) through direct cash payments or vouchers. The United States is now muddling through the unresolved conflict of health services as a business or as a public service. If AMCs are threatened with bankruptcy because of their divided missions, national and state governments will respond with arbitrary relaxation of the equally arbitrary cuts in disproportionate share, or provide some additional health research funding and student loans, which may tide the AMCs over until the next crisis. If Medicare rules (to preserve public control) lead to numerous federal indictments for reimbursement fraud (the providers trying to eke out every possible payment dollar to keep afloat in the competitive market), the larger providers will complain, and the federal government will relax its enforcement efforts, until another highly publicized crackdown is launched, and the cycle begins again. Perhaps the United States, with its wealth, will be able to keep muddling through indefinitely. If we keep slathering money around the healthcare system, taking it away here and putting it back there, perhaps we can keep believing that our healthcare system is both a business and a public service at the same time. We can avoid making fundamental decisions about the nature of healthcare. As long as we are willing to keep our wallets wide open, that is, and are not too fussy about the resulting disorder that keeps our healthcare managers in, as the Chinese would say, “interesting times.”
Social funds directly finance small community-managed projects, helping to empower the poor and vulnerable by allowing them to become actively involved in their own development. With social fund financing and technical assistance, communities identify their own development priorities, hire contractors, manage project funds and implement and sustain the projects. Because social funds often operate outside traditional government bureaucracies, they disburse funding and implement projects more quickly than traditional development mechanisms. Initiated as a temporary measure to alleviate economic distress in Bolivia in 1987, social funds are currently active in more than 50 countries, serving at the forefront of the World Bank's community-driven development agenda. Since their inception, social funds have financed more than 100,000 small-scale community interventions, ranging from infrastructure and social services to training and micro-enterprise development. Social funds led the reconstruction effort in the wake of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras and Nicaragua. They are also helping to rebuild torn societies in Kosovo, Rwanda and East Timor and are supporting long-range decentralization strategies in Bolivia and Nicaragua. Construction and repair of schools and health facilities and the creation of water supply infrastructure constitute 80 percent of social fund projects. Social funds also initiate community training programs, establish micro-credit agencies, invest in erosion control and irrigation, and sponsor programs for vulnerable groups like the aged, people with disabilities and AIDS sufferers.
We have increasingly held the view that education is a private good, which should serve the individual interests of educational consumers, rather than a public good, which should serve the broader public interest in producing competent citizens and productive workers, Mr. Labaree points out. And the last thing we think we need is a standards effort that equalizes educational achievement. THE MATTER OF setting standards for American education is certainly quite visible these days, but much of what we hear about it is not very enlightening. The talk is frequently filled with ideological heat rather than with critical light, and the tone of the discussion is more often nostalgic than realistic. In addition, the pitch in favor of standards is currently so strong that it may well leave a number of listeners wondering why such an obviously needed and beneficial reform wasn't undertaken a long time ago. But the fact is that the effort to establish educational standards has always been an uphill fight in this country. In light of these circumstances, it is useful to examine why Americans have so vigorously resisted educational standards over the years. The history of such resistance suggests that there are three factors in particular that have made standards such a hard sell: a commitment to local control of schools, a commitment to expansion of educational opportunity, and a commitment to form over substance in the way we think about educational accomplishment. All three of these factors, which I treat below, can be traced in large part to our preference for one particular purpose of education: we have increasingly held the view that education is a private good, which should serve the individual interests of educational consumers, rather than a public good, which should serve the broader public interest in producing competent citizens and productive workers. Preserving Local Control First, consider our traditional commitment to preserving local control. The core issue here is the wide and deep strain of libertarian sentiment that lies at the heart of the American psyche. The urge to preserve individual liberty is a key to understanding American society, and it is what defines our distinctive approach to politics, economics, and education. Don't tell me what to do? has long been our national slogan. By it we have meant in particular that government should keep off our backs - especially government that is far removed from our local community. All you need to do is remember that this nation was born of an uprising against a colonial government that tried to impose modest taxes on it from afar. In education, this sentiment came to be expressed as a staunch defense of local control of our schools. During most of the 19th century, the local school was the primary unit of educational governance for most Americans. An individual community built a school, hired a teacher, raised money through local taxes and fees, and implemented education on its own terms. Outside help was neither offered nor welcomed. This was the ultimate in local control. Even in large cities, control of education tended to rest at the ward level. Consider some numbers that suggest the radical degree of decentralization that has long characterized American education. It was not until 1937 that we started recording information about the number of individual school systems in the country. In that year, which was some 40 years after the start of a massive effort by reformers to consolidate districts into larger administrative units, there were about 120,000 individual school districts in the U.S. This meant that on average there were only two schools per district. Now, that is really local control. Even now, after consolidation has continued for another 60 years, we still have about 15,000 separate school districts - each with primary control over financing, staffing, and setting curriculum standards for our schools. …
In the early 1970s physicians engaged in fierce debates over the most appropriate method of evaluating the efficacy of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). With millions of patients and billions of dollars at stake, CABG sparked fierce controversy. Skeptics demanded that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) be performed, while enthusiasts argued that they already had visual proof of CABG's efficacy. When RCTs appeared, they did not settle the controversy. Participants simply reasserted their preconceptions, defending a trial's strengths or exploiting its flaws. The debate centered on standards of knowledge for the evaluation of therapeutic efficacy. Specifically, cardiologists and cardiac surgeons struggled to assess the relevance of different measures of therapeutic success: physiological or clinical, visual or statistical. Many factors contributed to participants' decisions, including disciplinary affiliation, traditions of research, personal experience with angiography, and assessments of the history of cardiac therapeutics. Physicians had to decide whether angiography provided a meaningful representation of the disease and its treatment or whether demonstrations of therapeutic success could come only from long-term statistical evaluation of mortality data.
Open access
Health and Medical Research Impacts
Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life
Click on a number in a financial report and get all the details. In the late 1980s, most accountants put aside their columnar pads and calculators and advanced to computers. In some respects, that was a big step, but in reality, very little actually changed: The financial reports were simply transferred from paper to the computer screen. Although the efficiency of report generation was improved, the reports were still static and what you saw on the screen, just as what you saw on the paper, was what you got. Unless extra information was added in a footnote or an addendum, there was no way such a static report--whether it was prepared on paper or on the computer--would show where any of the numbers came from or how they were calculated. Today's technology has given financial managers the opportunity to make reports both interactive and multidimensional. Mind you, we're not talking about leading-edge or tomorrow's technology. Set up properly, Microsoft Excel call allow financial report viewers to dig below the surface of a statement and uncover the source of any number and how it was calculated--in effect, to add new dimensions to otherwise static reports. The technique is commonly called drill-down functionality. Previously, we described how to distribute financial reports throughout an organization electronically rather than on paper (see Financial Reports in a Snap, JofA, Apr. 00, page 31). Once freed from the paper medium, reports also can become dynamic and interactive. This article demonstrates how to achieve drill-down functionality by creating an interactive selling, general and administrative (SGA exporting as a comma-delimited flat file works well. The minimum fields you need to export are month, department number, account number, account description, transaction description and transaction amount. Import this file into an Access table to which you keep appending the current month's data. The table should contain all the fields you export from the general ledger. …
distinguished service awardDauril Alden, University of Washingtonherbert e. bolton memorial prizeFriedrich Katz, The Life and Times of Pancho Villa, Stanford University Press, 1998 José C. Moya, Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930, University of California Press, 1998conference on latin american history prizeErik Ching and Virginia Tilley, “Indians, the Military and the Rebellion of 1932 in El Salvador,” Journal of Latin American Studies 30, no. 1 (1998)james a. robertson memorial awardKatherine E. Bliss, “The Science of Redemption: Syphilis, Sexual Promiscuity, and Reformism in Revolutionary Mexico City,” HAHR 79, no. 1 (1999)tibesar prizeFrancie Robin Chassen de López, “Maderismo or Mixtec Empire? Class and Ethnicity in the Mexican Revolution, Costa Chica of Oaxaca, 1911,” The Americas 55, no. 1 (1998)Honorable Mention: Cynthia Radding, “Crosses, Caves, and Matachinis: Divergent Appropriations of Catholic Discourse in Northwestern New Spain,” The Americas 55, no. 2 (1998)lewis hanke prizePatrice Elizabeth Olsen, Stephen F. Austin State University, “Artifacts of Revolution: Architecture, Society, and Politics in Mexico City, 1920–1940”the lydia cabrera awardJane Landers, Vanderbilt University, “Afro-Floridian Exiles in Cuba, 1763 and 1821”james r. scobie memorial awardGregory Spira, Georgetown University, “Rebellion, Resistance, and Cultural Change: Popular Reactions to the Bourbon Reforms, San Luis Potosí, 1767–1810”Honorable Mention: Annalyda Alvarez Calderón, State University of New York, Stony Brook, “Peasant Revolts, Intellectuals and the State: Ideology and National Identities under Leguía’s Patria Nueva”Papers in this session centered around links between local elites and provincial interests on the one hand, and early definitions of the Brazilian monarchy and state, on the other. Kirsten Schultz’s (Columbia University) paper, “The Foundation of Royal Authority in the Brazilian Empire (1808–1821),” examined the process of redefining the ideals and practices of Portuguese royal authority in Brazil during the residence of the Portuguese king in Rio de Janeiro. The transfer of the royal court was understood to be the greatest of all revolutions in the existing political system, and royal officials and Brazilians alike pursued a critique of the inequality that had existed under colonialism. Yet, the acclamation of a “new Lusitanian empire” was gradually conflated with the emergence of an “Empire of Brazil,” and from this it required only the adoption of constitutionalism in Portugal to progress to the point where, as constitutionalists put it, “the Kings are Kings, when and where the peoples want.” As a new political language emerged, the discourse began to define “the nation” as a distinct and autonomous Brazil rather than as a renewed union with Portugal.Jeffrey D. Needell (University of Florida) was the organizer of the session. His paper, “Provincial Origins of the State: The Province of Rio de Janeiro, the Monarchy, and National Political Organization, 1808–1853,” addressed the origins in the province of Rio de Janeiro of the reactionary centralist movement that would eventually become the Conservative Party. During the minority of Pedro II from 1831 to 1840, the movement coalesced in response to the decentralizing liberal reforms of 1831–34, but this party reversed those reforms after it came to power. Needell’s primary focus was a consideration of the economic and social interests and regional bases of this party of the Regresso, thereby analyzing the ideologies and actors involved in state-making. This movement dominated the imperial government by the late 1840s and its vision—centralized, authoritarian, and monarchical—largely became the imperial vision under Pedro II.Jeffrey C. Mosher’s (Texas Tech University) paper, “Elite Divisions and the Choice for Monarchy in Pernambuco, 1831–1853,” looked at divisions among provincial elites and their relationship with political parties and the imperial court in Rio de Janeiro. Mosher considered a particularly interesting example: the province of Pernambuco during the dominance of the Cavalcanti de Albuquerque and Regos Barros families, a classic regional oligarchy in every sense. Mosher showed how this extended family was divided internally in ideology, resisted by other elite families located north of Recife, and opposed by the rise of a major new liberal movement. Disputes over provincial power even forced conservatives from Pernambuco into open defiance of the emperor over the selection of lifetime senators from the province. Yet, to protect their own interests, local conservatives had to stand by the throne, which was in some ways their own creation.The theme of regionalism continued in Judy Bieber’s (University of New Mexico) paper entitled “Liberals, Pardos, and Pés de Chumbo: Nativism, Ideology and Partisan Politics in the Sertão Mineiro, Brazil, 1831–1850.” Politics in the rural hinterland of the Comarca do Rio São Francisco of Minas Gerais, she argued, were no more immune to the influence of ideology and party than were those in the coastal cities. The contest over definition of the Brazilian identity and state extended even to this distant region and was often seen in contests over control of municipal governments and resources. Electoral violence first appeared in the region in 1849, introduced by the Conservative provincial president of the day to insure the electoral victory of conservatives. With the loss of local autonomy came greater violence, often induced by outside intervention. Local and national politics were intimately linked, as the development of a centralized political machine that could control local elections created an institutionalized form of patronage, which in turn this distant region was into the national by session E. (University of some with early Mexican national to and between the all were of for on the and of early Brazilian and the emergence of a to those that the province and the be as and distinct that the national state be considered a and paper to the links between province and region and and the theme of the provincial origins of the The of on a of and the and the influence of and e. of Latin to the relationship between politics and political on the one hand, and the and of Latin American history on the other. that the or it paper on the politics of Latin American history the late and on the “new of Mexican with a paper social in the under the the session on a of considered the political and of in the Latin American the of political by and the of political and in the region and the of Latin American the the session on a of among the and other at other over the or that a when Latin a new and and when the state of and “the particularly for this of Latin American other the of and the of 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The author studies the \n allocation-between a central government and a local \n authority--of responsibility for planning, financing, and \n operations for the delivery of health services, in the \n context of an incomplete contracts model. In this model, \n inputs are required of both the central government and local \n authorities but they are unable to write down, and commit \n to, a complete and binding contract describing the actions \n both should take. The model is meant to capture the tradeoff \n between central and local authority in decisions about both \n financing and the provision of services. Each party provides \n a specific input--for example, the central government \n establishes a drug procurement system while the local \n authority designs and implements an incentive scheme to get \n doctors to carry out their responsibilities appropriately. \n The responsibility for delivery of services is identified \n with the ownership of essential infrastructure, such as the \n clinic or hospital. The author finds that to maximize the \n joint surplus of the two public bodies: Ownership of the \n facility should be given to the party that most values the \n well-being of local residents. (This way, if ex post \n bargaining breaks down, each still enjoys some benefits from \n the other's actions.) Financing authority and \n responsibility for delivering services should be negatively \n correlated. Generally it is optimal to allocate tax \n authority to the party that values the residents' \n well-being less--in other words, separate spending \n responsibility (ownership) from financing authority. A \n heavier financing burden (access to a small and inefficient \n tax base) has the same incentive effect as asset ownership: \n It increases the return to effort. If transferring ownership \n of the physical asset is costly (because the party that \n builds the asset has an inherent advantage in operating \n it-that is, there is some human capital embodiment), it may \n be optimal for the party with the higher construction costs \n to have planning authority. Somewhat paradoxically, the \n greater the costs of transferring assets from one party to \n the other, the more likely that ownership of the facilities \n and their provision should be separated.
This paper reports the results of an experiment that examines how incentive-based compensation contracts compare to flat-wage compensation contracts in motivating individual learning and performance. I use a multiperiod cognitive task where the accounting system generates information (feedback) that has both a contracting role and a belief-revision role. The results suggest that incentives enhance performance and the rate of improvement in performance by increasing both: (1) the amount of time participants devoted to the task, and (2) participants' analysis and use of information. Further, I find evidence that incentives improve performance only after considerable feedback and experience, which may help explain why many prior one-shot decision-making experiments show no incentive effects. Collectively, the results suggest that incentives induce individuals to work longer and smarter, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will develop and use the innovative strategies frequently required to perform well in complex judgment tasks and learning situations.
Probably not, if the motion is supported by a showing of the categories of witnesses not subject to process and the problems of inconvenience IN CLASSIC forum non conveniens cases, plaintiffs file actions in forums in which they are not residents, where most--if not all--of the events and giving rise to the action did not occur, and (it's not surprising) where the bulk of the evidence relevant to the case is not located. The typical motive is the opportunity to win a damages award that would be unavailable in forums where the action logically should have been brought. Jurisdiction often is based on the defendant's residence in the forum where the case is filed or the fact that at least some of the pertinent events occurred there. While a motion to dismiss under the doctrine of forum non conveniens requires a court to examine and balance a number of different one factor--the availability of compulsory process for the attendance of unwilling witnesses--may require the defendant to do the impossible. That impossibility is obtaining the cooperation of an unwilling witness to prove that the witness is unwilling to participate voluntarily in litigation in a forum where the witness is not subject to compulsory process. WHAT IS IT? The doctrine of forum non conveniens vests a trial court with discretionary power to decline jurisdiction of a matter when the convenience of the parties and the ends of justice would be better served if the action were brought and tried in another forum. When the court is asked to decide whether to dismiss an action for forum non conveniens, it engages in a two-step process. First, it must determine that an alternative forum exists. Second, it must weigh and balance the and interests. A. Adequate Alternative Forum An alternative forum will be held inadequate only in those rare circumstances where it is so clearly ... unsatisfactory that it is no remedy at all, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Piper Aircraft Co. v. Reyno.(1) The substantive law of the foreign forum is presumed adequate unless the plaintiff makes some showing to the contrary or it is plainly obvious to the court that the plaintiff is highly unlikely to obtain basic justice in the foreign forum.(2) B. Private and Public Interests Once it is established that an alternative forum exists, the next step is to weigh and balance the and interest factors at stake. In Gulf Oil Corp. v. Gilbert,(3) the U.S. Supreme Court enumerated two sets of factors. The first set, called the private interest factors, relates to the convenience of the litigants and includes the following: * The relative ease of access to sources of proof; * The availability of compulsory process for attendance of unwilling witnesses; * The cost of obtaining attendance of willing witnesses; * The possibility of viewing the premises, if such viewing is appropriate to the action; and * All other factors which make trial of a case easy, expeditious and inexpensive. The second set of called the public interest factors, includes the following: * The administrative difficulty encountered when litigation pends for protracted time periods in congested centers rather than being handled at its origin; * The imposition of jury duty on people in a community having no relation to the litigation; * The local interest of having localized controversies decided at the location giving rise to the dispute; and * The bias in favor of having disputes with local interest decided within the jurisdiction having the greater interest in the eventual outcome of the controversy. These factors are not intended to provide bright-line rules. Rather, according to Gulf Oil, they are to serve as aids to the court in making a determination as to whether a discretionary declination of jurisdiction is appropriate. …
Stan Chervin, Kelly D. Edmiston, Matthew N. Murray
Decentralized systems of government finance give rise to fiscal disparities due to interjurisdictional variations in tax bases and expenditure needs. Intergovernmental aid is used to address such disparities. This article explores changes in local tax capacity and intergovernmental aid resulting from urban shopping malls that extract retail sales and sales tax revenue away from surrounding areas, especially rural counties. A model is developed and estimated to determine the impact of urban malls on local government sales tax bases, controlling for sales tax rate differentials and other factors. The results reveal a 15.9% decline in the sales tax base for counties in close proximity to two newmalls. The analysis is extended to examine impacts of changing local tax capacity on state education aid. Based on the programconsidered here, less than 20% of the loss in own-source revenue is recovered through increased aid.