Human beings increase their productivity by specializing their resources and exchanging their products. The organization of exchange is costly, however, because specialized activities need coordination and incentives have to be aligned. This work first describes how these exchanges are organized...

In this paper, we study how access pricing affects network competition when subscription demand is elastic and each network uses non-linear prices and can apply termination-based price discrimination. In the case of a fixed per minute termination charge, we find that a reduction of the...

This paper offers a general view of changes in health care management in the Spanish Health System. We focus on the organisational, financing and accountability aspects of health care provision. We do this by encompassing managerial changes and social change and well-grounded in theory health...

Recent decisions by the Spanish national competition authority (TDC) mandate payment systems to include only two costs when setting their domestic multilateral interchange fees (MIF): a fixed processing cost and a variable cost for the risk of fraud. This artificial lowering of MIFs will not...

Professional services require certain organizational patterns in order to avoid information asymmetries and external effects. These same patterns are used within production structures involving various degrees of monopoly. However, competitive restraints are justified today only when substantial...

This paper offers a general view of changes in health care management in the Spanish Health System. We focus on the organisational, financing and accountability aspects of health care provision. We do this by encompassing managerial changes and social change and well-grounded in theory health...

This article examines the private mechanisms used to safeguard quality in auditing, with a view to defining rules capable of facilitating the performance of market forces. An outline is given of a general theory of private quality assurance in auditing, based on the use of quasi-rents to...

Simplifying business formalization and eliminating outdated formalities is often a good way of improving the institutional environment for firms. Unfortunately, the World Bank’s "Doing Business" project is harming such policies by promoting a reform agenda that gives them priority even in...

Over recent years, both governments and international aid organizations have been devoting large amounts of resources to “simplifying” the procedures for setting up and formalizing firms. Many of these actions have focused on reducing the initial costs of setting up the firm, disregarding...

Using econometric evidence, this article confirms that distribution of medicines online is split into two market segments of very diverse quality, and identifies the factors that drive quality and quality assurance in this activity. Unlike fraudulent, ‘rogue,’ websites, which offer scant...