Competing in the world economy does not automatically boost a nation's productivity and restructure its economy. Such progress requires mobilizing capital, employment, technology and knowledge. Opportunities beyond the business realm must be fully exploited to the benfit of society as a whole....

This essay concerns the ways in which public services – particularly household services such as communications, energy, water and transportation – have been regulated and deregulated, and analyses what consequences this has for users and citizens. Much of the deregulation of public services...

This paper (IFM-115) evaluates a set of contractual adjustments, renegotiations and disputes that have taken place in different public utility industries in Argentina since 1991, considering: 1) Whether the decisions analyzed are inside the initial contract or represent a modification of it; 2)...

This book presents a state-of-the-art evaluation of the benefits and costs of behind-the-border services reform. It introduces new, second-generation methods for quantifying regulatory barriers and applies those methods to a wide range of services sectors ¡ª financial, infrastructure and...

The most important issues in auction design are the traditional concerns of competition policy-preventing collusive, predatory, and entry deterring behaviour. Ascending and uniform-price auctions are particularly vulnerable to these problems (we discuss radiospectrum and football TV-rights...