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Purpose – The negotiated order branch of symbolic interaction used to examine the process by which welfare regulations were dramatically changed in which the forty-year old AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) was abandoned, and a new W-2 (Welfare Works) welfare reform effort was developed and socially negotiated with the Federal government and in the State of Wisconsin. We probe interactions within the mesodomain of four levels of actors: the Federal government; State-level government in both the executive and legislative branches; county-level government; and public and private welfare service delivery agencies.

Method – Qualitative, naturalistic, ten-year field study entailing interviews and archival analyses.

Findings – The reform effort involved the mutual constitution of the W-2 social structure and the social interactions that surrounded it through such strategies as negotiation, conflict, manipulation, coercion, exchange, bargaining, collusion, power brokering, and rhetoric, which were all circumscribed by and interpenetrated with the predecessor AFDC rule system. In turn, the welfare budget was reduced from $652m to $257m. We observed that the macro structure of welfare shaped the micro social actions of a variety of actors, and that micro social action by institutional entrepreneurs reconstituted structure of welfare policy in what proved to be a moving matrix.

Research implications – Implications were directed at extending and refining the negotiated order perspective.

Social implications – Given that the number of welfare recipients was reduced from 300,000 to 10,000, their fate in a weak economy was explored.

Originality – Chapter extends symbolic interaction concepts to examine a contested social domain.

Efforts to reduce farmers' market risks and improve buyers' access to farm commodities have encouraged contract farming (CF) in Ghana's cashew sector in recent years. Consequently, the existence of CF shows that farmers who use it may be benefiting from it, as it is their economic responsibility to decide how to sell agricultural products. However, the magnitudes of these benefits or otherwise have been inadequately explored. This paper aims to empirically estimate the impact of CF on farm performance and welfare of smallholder cashew farmers.

The study used probit-two-stage least square (probit-2sls) as a primary estimator to account for self-selection bias and endogeneity that could arise from both observed and unobserved heterogeneities among farming households to estimate the causal effects of CF on farm performance and household welfare.

The results indicated that participation in CF contribute significantly to the gains in farm performance (price margins, yields and net farm revenue) and welfare (consumption expenditure per capita), and that the non-participants of CF would have benefited substantially if they had participated. An analysis of the farm size disaggregated into small, medium and large with regards to the outcome variables produces mixed results.

It can be concluded that participating in CF enhances farm performance and household welfare.

While many other studies do not account for changes in farm performance and welfare due to differences in farm size or other observed factors, this study fills a crucial void.

Both the collapse of the financial system and the recent child protection scandals in the UK illustrate the limitations of the contract model for regulating social interactions. This article argues that the economic orthodoxy that has dominated recent public policy in the affluent Anglophone countries is now discredited, and that the social value derived from communications and exchanges within cultures of empathy, respect and inclusion should supply criteria for evaluating interventions, and should replace contracts as means of sustaining quality in many aspects of services.

Contract farming (CF) is seen as a tool for creating new market opportunities hence increasing incomes for smallholder farmers. Critics, however, argue that CF is likely to pass risks to small scale farmers, thus favouring large scale farmers at the expense of smallholder farmers. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of CF on smallholder farmers’ income using a case study of avocado farmers in Kandara district in Kenya.

The study uses data collected from 100 smallholder avocado farmers in Kandara district in Kenya and employs an instrumental variable model (Probit-2SLS) to control for endogeneity in participation in the contract and examine the effect of CF on household, farm and avocado income.

The results indicate that participation in CF is not sufficient to improve household, farm and avocado income. Question remains regarding efficient implementation of CF arrangements to promote spill over effects on other household enterprises.

The research was carried out using farmers in Kandara district in Kenya as a case study, findings might therefore not reflect the status of CF in all countries.

The paper contributes to the growing debate on the effect of value chain upgrading strategies such as contracting on smallholder farmers’ welfare. The form of contracting studied in this paper differs from the standard contracts in that the key stakeholders (producers) are loosely enjoined in the contract through officials of their groups.

The chapter surveys recent developments in economics of contract interpretation. First, we point out the relevance of issue of contract interpretation to contracting problems. We then introduce a general economic model of contract interpretation. It explains why parties write gaps and fairly general terms in contracts, how the court should interpret them, and whether courts should always enforce what contracting parties write. Moreover, we explain why there are contradictions in contracts.

For all too long the government of the United States has been dreaming a very long and costly dream. In this dream, the government is the ultimate hero, battling poverty. But like all other dreams, this one is not what it seems. The ideals of the welfare state are, in fact, a nightmare of economic and social decline. It is time to restore the values upon which this country was founded. It is time to abolish the welfare state.

Considers the rise of welfare issues to the top of the political agenda and the place of feminist criticsm on this subject. Re‐evaluates the needs of women in light of their changing role in society. Looks at their need to be an income earner for the family and the demand for their skills in the workplace, followed by the changes in their domestic roles and looser financial dependency, together with a commitment to reform the welfare state based on the principle of welfare to work for all. Concludes that the impact has been negative on many women with responsibilities increasing faster than resources and rights, but also recognizes that choice has widened and independence has grown.

In the wake of public service liberalisation in many OECD countries, economic interventions into the purpose and implementation of social policies have gained a lot of interest in recent years. The prime aim of this paper is to describe the nature of these interventions. The paper examines the reasons for pursuing elusive efficiency objectives in the conduct of public policy, rationales for purchaser‐provider splits, evaluation of cost‐quality relationships, service costing and pricing, and the influence of “external” economic variables.

The paper breaks the analysis of public policy down to three layers of economic interventions: macroeconomics (allocative efficiency, intervention rationales and macroeconomic environment), mesoeconomics (economics of delivery in “social industries”) and microeconomics (agent behaviour, contracting, pricing and evaluation). Each level of economic intervention is illustrated with examples, mainly taken from Australian public policy and mainstream social economic research.

Some of the most critical questions in policy implementation (outsourcing, pricing, contracting and agency problems) can be traced back to economic reforms. Experiments with new modes of service delivery are driven by a changing economic context, yet the efficiency gains from these innovative approaches may come at the expense of service quality.

Changing macro‐, meso‐ and microeconomic variables profoundly alter the parameters of service delivery. Designers and managers of service delivery systems need to be aware of – and skilled in – the practical application of economic principles, concepts and methods.

Except for the health sector, there is a lack of consistent research on the interrelationships between the standard economics toolkit and the delivery of public services. Yet the two are profoundly intertwined. The paper helps distinguish these relationships by putting together elements of conceptual analysis and fieldwork.

Many argue that the design of compensation contracts for public company chief executive officers (CEOs) is often not guided by a goal of value maximization. Yet, there is limited direct empirical evidence on the negative consequences of the proposed inefficient contracting between shareholders and CEOs. Using data on CEO bonus contracts of the S&P 500 firms, we investigate potential firm performance implications of the use of qualitative criteria such as leadership and mentoring in those contracts. We maintain that unlike quantitative criteria, qualitative criteria are difficult to define and measure on an objective basis, possibly resulting in an inefficient and biased incentive structure. Twenty-five percent of the sample observations have CEO bonus contracts that include a qualitative criterion for bonus payment determination. Our results show that employee productivity, asset productivity, capital expenditures, and future abnormal stock returns are lower for firms that use a qualitative criterion in CEO bonus contracts than those that do not. Further, contrary to the argument in prior literature that earnings management decreases with the use of subjective performance indicators in incentive contracts, we find that income-increasing accruals are actually higher when the CEO bonus contract includes a qualitative criterion. We recommend that compensation committees set concrete, measurable performance goals for CEOs, providing CEOs with better guidance and helping improve their corporate decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to overview and critique the over‐reach of highly ideological assumptions of neo‐classical economics into policy and governance terrains. The ontology and epistemology of neo‐classical economics know no bounds in their imperial extension to non‐market applications. The colonization of Public Administration in Australia, and elsewhere, is a vexing epistemological issue, demanding some reckoning.

This deconstructive, critical essay seeks to provide a set of “check‐lists” of issues for those teaching, or proselytizing, governance within highly reduced public domains.

This paper moves an epistemological “audit” of “public choice theory” some steps forward, especially in the face of significant ideological and policy convergence, among putative social‐democratic governance regimes, regarding out‐sourcing, no‐bid contracting, agency “capture”, risk and a renewed urgency for necessary re‐regulation. The paper identifies policy imperatives for a new age of regulation after 35 years of prevailing “market fundamentalism”.

There has been much hubris associated with so‐called policy convergence in a globalized context. Deconstructing such hubris within a divergent world is long overdue for the next generation of scholars/policy apologists/rating agencies/and economists prone to some reflexivity in plying their “dismal” trade.