There is a large body of literature on the effect of educational resources on student performance, such as teacher qualification, class size, and physical resources in school. It is dominated by empirical studies which often find ambiguous effects of resource spending on student outcomes. The...

The various actors in regulated industries relate to each other within a broader institutional framework, i.e. by way of formal and informal rules. An important role in the implementation of liberalization processes is given to the regulation and thus to regulatory institutions. Regulation...

This paper considers hidden teacher effort in educational production and discusses the implications of multiple teacher effort dimensions on optimum incentive contracts in a theoretical framework. The analysis of educational production in a multitask framework is a new and unique contribution of...

This paper deals with two issues concerning the effects of population aging on education decisions in the presence of a PAYG pension system: We first analyze the effects of an aging population per se on individual skill choices and continuous education and the production structure. Second, we...

This paper considers the influence of spatial competition on education and its effect on students' school choice and educational achievement by explicitely modeling educational production and the students' participation decision. Education at school is a function of teacher effort and class...

This paper enhances the defender model by explicitly modeling the cost associated with quality attributes. It considers two firms and two quality attributes which cause fixed and variable cost, respectively, together with the price attribute. Hence, firms compete in three dimensions. The optimal...

Increased direct and indirect competition in the postal sector represents a great challenge to the traditional business model of postal operators. It is often put forward that regulatory institutions need to evolve in parallel and coherently with developments in the market place in order to...

This paper assesses the potential of a combined “USO in communications”, i.e. a USO that simultaneously defines the physical and digital requirements for the conveyance of communication irrespective of the specific sector.

In this paper we develop a stylized model of competition between brick-and-mortar merchants and online retailers. An offline transaction, matching payment with delivery, is without risk for both the seller and the buyer. In an online transaction the seller faces the potential risk of non-payment...

Universal service providers (USP) are increasingly active in business segments other than the segment consisting of their Universal Service Obligation (USO). Price regulation of USO services is usually cost-oriented and differentiated between USO- and non-USO-products. Hence, regulatory rules on...