Explore the vast range of titles available.

Abstract This article intends to review the theoretical aspects and empirical evidences made on agency theory. It is aimed to explore the main ideas, perspectives, problems and issues related to the agency theory through a literature survey. It discusses the theoretical aspects of agency theory and the various concepts and issues related to it and documents empirical evidences on the mechanisms that diminish the agency cost. The conflict of interest and agency cost arises due to the separation of ownership from control, different risk preferences, information asymmetry and moral hazards. The literatures have cited many solutions like strong ownership control, managerial ownership, independent board members and different committees can be useful in controlling the agency conflict and its cost. This literature survey will enlighten the practitioners and researchers in understanding, analysing the agency problem and will be helpful in mitigating the agency problem.

Subscription-based service providers (e.g., newspapers, internet services) often issue price-based incentives to recover from service failures. However, because considerable time may pass between when providers issue a recovery incentive and when service contracts are due for renewal, it is unclear whether recovery incentives can improve customer retention in the long run. The authors investigate this question by examining 6,919 contract renewal decisions of newspaper subscribers who received varying levels of recovery incentives after newspaper delivery failures. In contrast to conventional wisdom, they find that recovery incentives are associated with lower contract renewal likelihoods. They rationalize this finding using the economic theory of reference prices and further demonstrate that firms could mitigate the unintended consequence of recovery incentives by reminding subscribers of the original price at touch points following the recovery, discounting the renewal price, and prolonging the duration between the recovery and renewal. The authors also show that the intensity of promotions in the external environment at the time of administering recovery incentives, and that acquiring subscribers by communicating the value of the subscription service, can influence the long-term effectiveness of recovery incentives. For subscription-based service providers, the authors propose a decision support model to optimize recovery and renewal incentives and demonstrate its utility within this empirical context.

China is a country that suffers frequently from natural catastrophic events. Because of its limited resources, the government requires the assistance of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) in providing relief to affected communities. Previous studies on the government’s mobilization strategy following a disaster are surprisingly scarce, and the few existing studies typically neglected the differences between government-owned NPOs (GONPOs) and grassroots NPOs (GRNPOs). In the Chinese context, GONPOs rely on resources provided by the government and are amenable but have low initiative, while GRNPOs are highly enthusiastic but difficult to manage. This study identified the government’s discriminative strategy toward GONPOs and GRNPOs in coping with a disaster. Drawing on the evolutionary game theory, this study examined the interactive mechanism and factors in the relationship of the government with GONPOs and GRNPOs in disaster mobilization. Moreover, the optimal strategy is identified considering the cooperation benefit, reward incentive, punishment for nonfeasance, efficiency of response, cost of coordination, and value of legitimacy. Based on the results, this study provided practical implications both for the government and NPOs in disaster mobilization.

As growth and development in Africa increase rapidly, investment in infrastructure projects will often be best accomplished through public-private partnership. This Project Preparation Guide offers the foundation blocks for public sector engagement with the private sector. This book assesses the relevant issues for selecting a project for public-private partnership, the actions for preparing projects for market, and the management process The guide addresses hiring and managing expert advisers, explains how the public sector should interact with the private sector during the project selection and preparation phases to ensure that decisions during these phases are realistic, and analyzes the issues of engagement with the private sector during the tender and after a contract has been signed. 'Attracting Investor to African Public-Private Partnerships' will help the public sector in Africa to attract private sector investment through effective project advertising, management, and implementation. This book will enhance the chances of developing effective public-private partnerships by overcoming major obstacles to project delivery by having the right information, on the right projects, for the right partners, at the right time. This guide is aimed at African public sector officials who are concerned about the delivery of infrastructure projects and services through partnership with the private sector, as well as staff in donor institutions who are looking to support PPP programs at the country-level.

What transforms a desirable project on a government wish list to an attractive investment opportunity in the eyes of a potential private sector partner? This guide seeks to enhance the chances of developing effective partnerships between the public and the private sectors by addressing one of the main obstacles to the effective delivery of public-private partnership (PPP) projects: having the right information on the right project for the right partners at the right time. Data from the World Bank and the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) private participation in infrastructure (PPI) project database indicate that private sector investment in infrastructure in developing economies grew steadily over the past decade. By 2007 the levels had finally surpassed the peak levels seen in 1997, the end of the previous growth spurt. This guide focuses specifically on what should be done, and when, in order to prepare projects to attract the right long-term private partners, procure their involvement, and manage the partnership. This guide is not a detailed project preparation manual; rather, it seeks to provide an overview of the process and what is involved so that greater realism can be applied to this challenging task and adequate resource plans can be developed.

Foreign direct investment and private capital flows are highly concentrated geographically, with almost half of them reaching five top destinations. These flows tend to evade many high-risk countries. Regulatory and contractual risks, particularly in infrastructure, have inhibited investments in many parts of the developing world. A core objective of the World Bank Group (WBG) has been to support the flow of private investment for development; guarantees and insurance have been among the instruments that the WBG has used to pursue this objective. This study examines three main questions: • Should the WBG be in the guarantee business? • Have guarantee instruments in the three WBG institutions been used to their potential as reflected in WBG expectations and perceived demand? • Is the WBG appropriately organized to deliver its range of guarantee products in an effective and efficient manner?

If the contracts signed by the construction enterprises with the relationship of affiliating operation under the name of themselves or titular enterprises, affiliating operators and titular units are usually co litigants to prosecute or response. It’s stipulated in Article of Supreme Court “Suggestions on Civil Procedure Law” that “if individual businesses, individual partnership or private enterprises affiliate themselves with collective enterprises and operate under the name of collective enterprises, the individual businesses, individual partnership or private enterprises and the titular collective enterprises shall be the co litigants.”Constructors are affiliated to other construction enterprises and sign construction contracts under the name of titular construction enterprises, but the titular construction enterprises don’t want to prosecute, the constructors can be plaintiffs, titular construction enterprises are not necessary to be regarded as co-plaintiffs.

Este artículo analiza la legislación, la jurisprudencia de la Corte Suprema de Justicia y la doctrina expuesta en laudos arbitrales, para demostrar que en Colombia la competencia desleal no puede ser definida como responsabilidad civil extracontractual. De las cuatro áreas del derecho que han abordado la competencia desleal, tres de ellas se basan en legislación positiva y ninguna excluye su aplicación a la relación contractual. Las sentencias de casación proferidas bajo el Código de Comercio y la Ley 256 resaltan el carácter preventivo de este régimen, que no requiere daño para ser aplicado. Los laudos arbitrales demuestran que sí es posible arbitrar conflictos de competencia desleal en relaciones contractuales, con base en una cláusula compromisoria.

This article presents the results of the study on precarious employment, which represents a multilevel phenomenon of the instability in the socio-economic positions of workers. This phenomenon has various forms. Precarious employment can be identified both in terms of the quality and nature of employment contract, working conditions, and in terms of the standard of living of households of precarious workers, their self-perception and behaviour models in labour market and other spheres of life. The purpose of the research is to study precarious employment using sociological indicators. We characterize precarious employment of workers, in general, and also define their profiles. Depending on the type of contractual relations and the implementation of their requirements, the profiles of employees differ in the socio-demographic, age, educational and economic characteristics. As a research method, we chose a mass survey. The sampling frame is the Russian population aged from 15 to 72 years. The selection included 1002 respondents, which were quoted by sex, age, region and socio-demographic status on the labour market. During the survey, we investigated the various aspects of precarious employment including respect for the rights of employees, level of their income, prevalence of various forms of precarious employment by profession, sex-age structure. The results of the study are the demographic, socio-labour and economic characteristics of the surveyed population as well as the description of five profiles identifying the different groups of precarious workers. The results may be applied in social-labour relations regulated by contractual agreements and working conditions of employees. Restrictions are connected with the need to change the legislation and the enforcement of the current labour and civil legislation. Future research should be focused on the ьreasons of the differentiation in precarious employment.

The paper investigates the vertical relations along the Italian durum wheat chain and the factors affecting farmers’ behavior in adopting contractual agreements. Sale/crop-growing contracts in the durum wheat sector are analyzed through a direct survey to a sample of 261 durum wheat farmers. The questionnaire collected data on downstream relations and contract terms between farmers and processing and/or marketing firms along the durum wheat chain. A logit model is used to identify factors affecting the likelihood of contract farming between farms and processors. One of the main issues emerging is the low frequency of written contractual forms between durum wheat farmers and downstream operators. In most cases the farmers do not want constraints and reveal a lack of trust in contracts. They prefer to sell their product to a local downstream operator with whom they have a long-standing and solid relationship of trust. Moreover, results of a logistic model show that certain farm features, such as turnover and degree of specialization in durum wheat production, play an important role in driving the decision to adopt written contracts.