Determinants affecting privatisation of local government services in Britain

The aim of this paper is to analyse the determinants of CCC (Compulsory Competitive Tendering) policy outputs at the local government level in Britain and to examine how the outputs have been made, relating the CCT implementation process to the main factors affecting its outputs. Specifically, this study is based on the assumption that policy output as a general phenomenon can not be seperated from the process of formulating and implementing the policy. I shall argue that many of the major determinants underlying the CCT process remain unexplored and must be examined in order for us to understand more fully CCT policy as a service provision policy in local government. It is hoped that, in view of the characteristics and implications of the process of privatisation,this research will prove timely. Although the phenomenon of privatisation has spawned a huge literature in 1980s and 1990s, much of it has been guided by public choice theory, which argues the superior cost-efficiency of private over public service delivery. Although policy output studies have not been entirely neglected in these studies, they have generally been a secondary consideration to economic analysis. An examination of CCT policy output which associates the output with the dynamics of the policy implementation process is particularly important. It is no my intention to analyse whether CCT is a desirable policy or not. Rather, my more limited purpose is to identify the main factors which explain local variation in the output of CCT process, and to explain the way in which the contested privatisation process is related to the its output.

Estimating the Costs and Benefits of Local Government Reorganisation: A Case of Korea

It appears that few empirical studies have been conducted which are aimed at estimating not only the costs but also the benefits surrounding local government reorganisation, either in academia or in government, and most reports on the issue seem to focus primarily on costs. In order to examine local issues such as reorganisation, however, in which many interested parties are controversially involved, both costs and benefits should be estimated objectively and disseminated in as many ways as possible before a referendum is conducted. This paper intends to bridge the gap between current levels of analysis and what is required for an accurate appraisal to be made of local government reorganisation. In it, we introduce the result of a research project conducted in relation to a local authority reorganisation plan implemented in Korea. The initiative seeks to create a unitary local authority replacing one first-tier and four second-tier local authorities within the first tier, in the hope of reducing the cost of providing services and also of making local authorities more competitive. This paper describes the research strategy employed to estimate the costs and benefits associated with local government reorganisation, and then we introduce the results of the analysis. The research process being described here gives us information about what should be included in the categories of costs and benefits, and what methodologies can be applied in estimating these. Finally the analysis shows how much the benefits and costs resulting from reorganisation will be.

Estimating the costs and benefits of local government reorganisation

노트 : 46th Congress of the European Regional Science Association: "Enlargement, Southern Europe and the Mediterranean", August 30th - September 3rd, 2006, Volos, Greec

What most Matters in Strengthening Educational Competitiveness?: An Application of FS/QCA Method

AbstractThis study was conducted in order to investigate the relationships between different factors affecting educational competitiveness, which is crucial to enhancing national competitiveness in every country, and to put forward policy implications whereby each country may raise the level of its educational competitiveness. PISA score was selected as an indicator representing the educational competitiveness of 22 OECD countries, and this included some independent variables, such as per capita GDP, total public expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP, and total per capita public expenditure on education (US dollars), affecting educational competitiveness. We employed the fuzzy set analysis method (FS/QCA) to analyze the complex causal relationships among the factors affecting educational competitiveness. The research results show that there are three significant combinations of variables affecting educational competitiveness (PISA score). Model 1 is a configuration of four variables (high total expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP, high total per capita expenditure on education, high ratio of private-source expenditure on education to GDP, and high GDP), and includes Netherlands, Finland, Australia, and Ireland. Model 2 is a configuration of five variables (low total expenditure on education, low total per capita expenditure on education, low ration of students to teaching staff, low private-source expenditure on education, and low GDP, and includes Poland. Model 3 is a configuration of five variables (low total expenditure on education, low total per capita expenditure on education, high private-source expenditure on education, high ratio of students to teaching staff, and high GDP), and includes Japan. Finally, the study suggests that each country should endeavour to enhance its own educational competitiveness, considering how the factors associated with this relate to each other

A Case of Idiopathic Adulthood Ductopenia

Idiopathic adulthood ductopenia (IAD) is a chronic cholestatic liver disease of unknown etiology characterized by adult onset, an absence of autoantibodies, inflammatory bowel disease, and a loss of interlobular bile ducts. In the present report, a case fulfilling the IAD criteria is described. A 19-year-old man was admitted to the hospital for persistent elevation of transaminases and alkaline phosphatase without clinical symptoms. Viral hepatitis markers and autoantibodies were absent. The patient had a normal extrahepatic biliary tree and had no evidence of inflammatory bowel disease. A liver biopsy specimen showed absence of interlobular bile ducts from 58% of the portal tracts. He was diagnosed with IAD and was treated with ursodeoxycholic acid

Searching for social characteristics and policy measures for each stage of the corona spread in Korea: Social network analysis and systems thinking

This study analysed the social situation in Korea caused by the Corona pandemic, as shown in YouTube videos between January 2020 when the Corona pandemic began in Korea and December 2021, about two years later, along with its characteristics. The aim of the study was to derive lessons for future quarantine policies. First, the two-year period was divided into three phases in consideration of trends in the number of Corona patients. Then, for each period, YouTube videos created during this period were analysed using text network analysis and the system dynamics analysis method, both of which represent a kind of big data analysis method. This analysis method is new, and is highly significant in terms of research methodology. In addition, the analysis results provide important policy implications. One important policy meaning is the derivation of the reinforcing loop and balancing loop that policymakers should consider for each period

Comparative analysis of the role of medical staff in Korea following the coronavirus pandemic: Comparisons after one and two years

The aim of this study is to analyse the roles played by medical personnel such as doctors and nurses in Korea in the context of Covid, and to suggest directions for responding to possible pandemics in the future from the perspective of the roles of medical personnel. For this analysis, Korean YouTube video contents were analysed; the analysis methods employed were text-mining and ego network analysis. The analysis target period was 2020, the year in which the Corona pandemic was declared, and 2021, one year after the declaration of the pandemic. As a result of the analysis six themes, derived from the perspective of the role of medical professionals, were selected in respect of each year. In the future, the Korean medical policy decision-making process should aim to reflect these topics