This paper discusses a theoretical framework to study the issues of competition and incentives without relying on the standard profit-oriented “market” model in the context of the debates about public service reform in the UK. It uses the idea that the production of public services coheres...

This paper reviews some issues relevant to the delivery of public services. Itreviews some of the debates and flags some issues that are significantworldwide, especially in Africa. It emphasises how the debate has movedalong in terms of defining the relative responsibilities of the public...

This paper proposes a simple framework to study incentives and matching in the marketfor teachers. The framework is used to investigate the consequences of introducing incentivepay for teachers when contracts have both a matching and an incentive effect. Our analysissuggests that school...

A unifying theme in the literature on organizations such as public bureaucraciesand private nonprofits is the importance of mission, as opposed to profit, as anorganizational goal. Such mission-oriented organizations are frequently staffed bymotivated agents who subscribe to the mission. This...

This paper develops an approach to studying how bias in favor ofone party due to the pattern of electoral districting affects policy choice.We tie a commonly used measure of electoral bias to the theory of partycompetition and show how this affects party strategy in theory. Theusefulness of the...

This paper develops a simple model to analyze how a lack of politi-cal competition may lead to policies that hinder economic growth. Wetest the predictions of the model on panel data for the US states. Inthese data, we …nd robust evidence that lack of political competitionin a state is...

This paper develops an approach to political equilibrium in a two-party setting. The approach characterizes political resource allocationas trading o¤ the utility of core party supporters and swing voters,i.e. those who are not attached to either party. The model has threestages. First parties...

There are N citizens who have to make a social decision about a set policies denotedby x ∈ A, where A denotes the set of feasible policies. Citizen’s preferencesover policy are denoted V i (x, j) ( where i = 1, ...,N) ,and j denotes the identityof the policy maker. This specification allows...

The theme of this year's WDR is how to structure institutions to bring about an effectively functioning market economy. There is no question that political institutions play a key role here. In most countries political institutions determine the rules of access to considerable discretionary...