Market conforming institutions are a precondition for a thriving and stable economy. This is the upshot of the Washington consensus or, of somewhat earlier origin, the “Eucken hypothesis”. Another hypothesis of Eucken has it that market conforming institutions are the product of a strong state. However, more general and more important than the strong state is good governance. In this paper I re...

Governance has become a concept that includes more and more phenomena related to the steering of societal developments. The steering of developments had to be left to societal actors and had to be accomplished through networks in which hierarchy hardly played a role. The term “good governance” is abused by using so many indicators that it becomes nearly impossible to achieve good governance. At...

Good governance in health systems is an ideal which is difficult to achieve in its totality but is said to exist if overarching societal goals and values such as solidarity, equity and participation are realized. It requires a process of decision-making and effective implementation and can be judged on the basis of how government institutions conduct their public affairs, manage resources and r...

This paper focuses on governance modes for service development of mobile telephone networks (GSM, WAP, GPRS, UMTS). ‘Services’ refer to services embodying a specific content. The paper shows that the phase of the life cycle of the network and the service affects the choice of governance mode of new service development projects. Governance modes include internal development by the telecom operat...

We derive an empirical test for third-order stochastic dominance that allows for diversification between choice alternatives.The test can be computed using straightforward linear programming. Bootstrapping techniques and asymptotic distribution theory can approximate the sampling properties of the test results and allow for statistical inference. Our approach is illustrated using real-life US s...

We propose linear programming tests for spanning and intersection based on stochastic dominance rather than mean-variance analysis. An empirical application investigates the diversification benefits to US investors from emerging equity markets. 5001-6182 Business 4001-4280.7 Finance Management, Business Finance, Corporation Finance Library of Congress Classification (LCC) HG 1576+ Statistics Ba...

We develop a Stochastic Dominance methodology to analyze if new assets expand the investment possibilities for rational nonsatiable and risk-averse investors. This methodology avoids the simplifying assumptions underlying the traditional mean-variance approach to spanning. The methodology is applied to analyze the stock market behavior of small firms in the month of January. Our findings sugges...