This paper explores the procurement of public buildings in local authorities in the UK under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and its consequences for small and medium sized enterprises. Following an outline of the development of PFI in the UK, the paper explains the peculiarities of local...

Differences in pay between women and men in the same jobs have captured the public's attention in recent years. However, public interest in and press coverage of salary differences on the basis of gender—or any other ascriptive class—in the learned professions are wanting. Moreover, few...

In the late 1820s, when British Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel introduced legislation into the British parliament to create the very first police department, the phrase that the ‘police are the public, and the public are the police' was developed to allay public fears that the new institution...

Decentralization has been an important international development in large organizations, including those in the public sector, in recent years. The introduction of self-governing trusts in the U.K. National Health Service in the early 1990s serves as a paradigm case of public sector...

Can the intensification of the asymmetric commercial relationships between China and Brazil explain the early deindustrialization in Brazil? In this paper it will be shown that it is not economic openness what leads towards deindustrialization, low productivity, or reduced added value, but the...

A well-functioning housing market is essential for economic prosperity and well-being. A combination of favourable economic and financial conditions and tight housing supply led to sharp increases in real house prices between the mid-1990s and end 2007, which spurred household consumption. While...