Competition Law in Telecommunications and its Implications for Common Carriage of Water

As with most water companies in the world UK water companies face very little competition for the delivery of water within their area. However, recently both the government and the regulator, Ofwat, have indicated that they wish to see a major change in the industry through a significant growth of competition. The pricing of common carriage of water will be central to whether this objective can be achieved. The aim of this paper is assess UK and European competition policy in telecommunications and the lessons that can be learnt from this for the regulation of common carriage in the water industry.anti-trust, competition policy, regulation, utilities

Financing and Managing Public Services: An Assessment

Public services can be, and are, delivered according to a variety of different arrangements. The public sector can finance and provide a service itself, or contract with the private sector to participate in provision, or its role may be limited to regulating a private provider. In this paper we examine the features determining the effectiveness of public-service delivery, including incentives for employees and teams within organizations providing public services, the structure of the organization and the competitive framework that it faces, and the role of the private sector. We assess the reform programme in the UK, which has involved substantial reorganization of public services and increasing involvement of the private sector. Reforms focus on the improvement of incentives; but while incentives are critical, the special characteristics of public services (and the people who provide them) must be recognized in the implementation of new structures and incentive schemes.public services, public management

Non-Profit Organizations in a Bureaucratic Environment

How does the environment of an organization influence whether workers voluntarily provide effort? We study the power relationship between a non-profit unit (e.g. university department, NGO, health trust), where workers care about the result of their work, and a bureaucrat, who supplies some input to the non-profit unit, but has opportunity costs in doing so (e.g. Dean of faculty, corrupt representative, government agency). We find that marginal changes in the balance of power eventually have dramatic effects on donated labor. We also identify when strengthening the non-profit unit decreases and when it increases donated labor.donated labor, intrinsic motivation, non-profit organizations, power within organizations

The Role of Donated Labour and Not for Profit at the Public/Private Interface

The aim of this paper is to assess the role of donated labour and not-for-profit (NFP) entities at the public private interface. After discussing what a NFP enterprise is and providing general background, we look at the underlying theory of NFP institutions. The fact that NFP companies are able to precommit themselves not to expropriate donated labour is identified as a primary justification of the NFP model and we emphasise the role that purchasers play in the expropriation problem and suggest that this is a particular concern for institutions at the public private interface. After summarising the empirical literature we provide a brief case study of Glas Cymru and show that it is likely to fall foul of the purchaser problems in that the structure makes it hard to avoid expropriation of donated labour. Although there is limited empirical evidence investigation of what is available suggests that the shift from FP to NFP has had no significant effect on the company. Finally, we address the issue of Foundation Hospitals and suggest that there is more, albeit limited, reason to suggest that the NFP status will prove beneficial for donating labour.not-for-profit, public private interface

The Costs and Benefits of "Strangers": Why Mixed Communities Are Better

Much of the literature on diversity assumes that individuals have an exogenous "taste for discrimination". In contrast with this approach, we build a model where preferences over the nature of one's community are derived indirectly, and arise because the composition of the community determines the behavior of its members. This allows us to gain a far deeper understanding of the forces that underpin the desirability of diversity or homogeneity within communities. Our main contribution is to show that there are always counteracting forces (heterogeneity involves both costs and benefits), and that, although people prefer to live in communities where their type is majoritarian, they always benefit from having some heterogeneity in the composition of their community.heterogeneity, social interactions, value of information, complementarities.

An Economic Theory of the Glass Ceiling

The glass ceiling is one of the most controversial and emotive aspects of employment in organisations. This paper provides a model of the glass ceiling that exhibits the following features that are frequently thought to characterise the problem: (i) there is a lower number of female employees in higher positions, (ii) women have to work harder than men to obtain equivalent jobs, (iii) women are then paid less than men when promoted, and (iv) some organisations are more female friendly than others. These features emerge as an equilibrium phenomenon, when identical firms compete in "Bertrand-like" fashion. Furthermore, they also occur even when offering women the same contract as men in higher positions would be sufficient to ensure that women in those positions would always prefer permanent career over non-market alternatives.Glass Ceiling, Promotions, Career Options

An Economic Theory of Glass Ceiling

In the 'glass ceiling' debate there appear to be two strongly held and opposing interpretations of the evidence, one suggesting it is really the result of gender differences and the other that there is discrimination by gender. This paper provides an economic theory of the glass ceiling and one of the main insights of our analysis is that in some real sense these two interpretations are not in conflict with each other. The glass ceiling emerges as an equilibrium phenomenon when firms compete à la Bertrand even though employers know that offering women the same contract as men would be sufficient to erase all differences among promoted workers. The model also provides new insights into anti-discrimination policy measures. (Updated from working paper 07/183)glass ceilings, promotions, career options

How important is pro-social behaviour in the delivery of public services?

A number of papers have posited that there is a relationship between institutional structure and pro-social behaviour, in particular donated labour, in the delivery of public services, such as health, social care and education. However, there has been very little empirical research that attempts to measure whether such a relationship exists in practice. This is the aim of this paper. Including a robust set of individual and job-specific controls, we find that individuals in the non-profit sector are significantly more likely to donate their labour, measured by unpaid overtime, than those in the for-profit sector. We can reject that this difference is simply due to implicit contracts or social norms. We find some evidence that individuals differentially select into the non-profit and for-profit sectors according to whether they donate their labour.pro-social behaviour; public services; donated labour; motivation