progress in economics

[Doug Henwood]

>"Public Versus Private Initiative in Arctic Exploration: The
> Effects of Incentives and Organizational Form"
>
>      BY:  JONATHAN M. KARPOFF
>              University of Washington
>
>Document:  Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:
>           http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=145609
>
>    Date:  February 26, 1999
>
> Contact:  JONATHAN M. KARPOFF
>   Email:  Mailto:karpoff at u.washington.edu
>  Postal:  University of Washington
>           School of Business
>           115 Lewis Hall
>           Box 353200
>           Seattle, WA 98195-3200  USA
>   Phone:  (206)685-4954
>     Fax:  (206)685-9392
>
>ABSTRACT:
> From 1818 to 1909, 35 government and 56 privately-funded
> expeditions sought to locate and navigate a Northwest Passage,
> discover the North Pole, and make other significant discoveries
> in arctic regions. Most major arctic discoveries were made by
> private expeditions. Most tragedies were publicly funded. By
> other measures as well, publicly-funded expeditions performed
> poorly. On average, 5.9 or 8.9% of their crew members died per
> outing, compared to 0.9 or 6.2% for private expeditions. Among
> expeditions based on ships, those that were publicly funded used
> an average of 1.63 ships and lost 0.53 of them. Private
> ship-based expeditions, in contrast, used 1.15 ships and lost
> 0.24 of them. Of public expeditions that lasted longer than one
> year, 46.7% were debilitated by scurvy, compared to 10.5% for
> private expeditions.
>
> Multivariate tests indicate that these differences are not due
> to differences in the exploratory objectives sought, country of
> origin, the leader's previous arctic experience, or the decade
> in which the expedition occurred. Rather, they are due to
> systematic differences in the ways public and private
> expeditions were organized. In particular, compared to private
> expeditions, public expeditions: (1) employed leaders that were
> relatively unmotivated and unprepared for arctic exploration;
> (2) separated the initiation and implementation functions of
> executive leadership; and (3) adapted slowly to new information
> about modes of arctic travel, clothing, diet, shelter,
> leadership structure, and optimal party size.
>
>
>JEL Classification: G39, H11, L29, L33, N40