A wide range of services provided by the public sector are credence goods, i.e., services for which the producer has private information whether a certain treatment is needed or not. This paper studies how ownership affects the incentives for producers to reveal such information to public...

This paper deals with the transformation of theatres - allowance organisations of the City of Prague. The whole issue is placed in a wider context of economic policy. The paper aims to evaluate the transformation using the example of selected theatres that have been transformed; the analysis also...

This paper briefly reviews some of the empirical findings of a research team of the University of Milan on privatization in different countries. The discussed effects include: effects on consumers, tax-payers, workers, shareholders; on aggregate growth, public finance, firms’ productivity,...

I develop a model of public sector contracting based on the multitask framework by Holmström and Milgrom (1991). In this model, an agent can put effort into increasing the quality of a service or reducing costs. Being residual claimants, private owners have stronger incentives to cut costs than...

I develop a model of public sector contracting based on the multitask framework by Holmström and Milgrom (1991). In this model, an agent can put effort into increasing the quality of a service or reducing costs. Being residual claimants, private owners have stronger incentives to cut costs than...

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) realize three critical strategic issues for improving the quality of urban services: the enhancement of governmental financing capabilities, the improvement of public investment efficiency, and the harnessing of consumer-orientated management expertise. Based...

Quangos and public entrepreneurship are closely related. The economic theory of quangos allows us to develop a quango theory and highlight the effects of public entrepreneurship. By considering principal agent relations we show how public entrepreneurship of government and quango influence each...

Using data from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys, we test two interesting results that emerge from the theoretical model presented in Shleifer and Vishny (1994) that studies bargaining between politicians and managers of state-owned firms. Shleifer and Vishny's model suggests that firms with...

Economic growth is below what would be needed to resume rapid convergence to average OECD living standards. On-going efforts to improve the business climate are laudable, but need to be widened and strengthened. Much progress has been achieved in reducing red tape, but it is only recently that...

The central objective of the research summarized in this report was to explore the ways and means of reforming State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) to achieve efficiency, profitability and accountability. Specifically, this project sought to: (i) survey international experience in SOE reform; (ii)...