Using panel data for nearly all service providers in a single industry sector, we examine productivity responses to changes in competition in the United States. The sector offers workplace employee representation through trade union branches which compete with one another for union members whose...

Regulations of product markets serve legitimate objectives but, when ill-designed, can impose unnecessary restrictions on competition, and therefore on business dynamism, productivity and ultimately well-being. A recent update of the OECD’s Product Market Regulation indicator for Costa Rica...

Using panel data for nearly all service providers in a single industry sector, we examine productivity responses to changes in competition in the United States. The sector offers workplace employee representation through trade union branches which compete with one another for union members whose...

Poland’s productivity has grown strongly over the past decade, and efforts to reduce the regulatory burden have been significant. Despite impressive progress, product market regulation remains more burdensome than in most OECD countries, partly due to the importance of red tape and the level...

We examine whether a hospitals quality is affected by the quality provided by other hospitals in the same market. We first set out a theoretical model with regulated prices which specifies conditions on demand and cost functions which determine whether a hospital will have higher quality when...

Higher education, like any other commodity or service, has been viewed in a variety of economic frameworks. Little of this work, however, appears to have made any effort to define carefully the boundaries of the relevant market for higher education, which is the subject of this particular...

The paper presents a linear model of product quality in scientific competition. The only outputs of research are published papers; the only inputs are labor and papers by other researchers, which are cited when used. Researchers compete for status, measured as their rank in a citations count. If...

This article evaluates EU policies on public services – particularly public network services - from the citizens´ point of view. It is first argued that citizens´ perceptions about these services are important because they are essential for quality of life, but also because they exhibit...

This paper examines the market conditions that facilitate the entry of for-profit institutions into the higher education market. I show how, despite significant government financial support for public institutions, for-profit institutions may still find it profitable to enter the market. They do...

This paper describes a randomized field experiment testing the impact of a savings competition on the behavior of homeless individuals staying at a transitional shelter. When monetary prizes were offered for achieving the highest savings rates within a particular month, savings increased while...