In recent years government economic policy in the UK and elsewhere has been guided by the belief that changing organisational status improves performance (Ott and Hartley, 1991; Vickers and Yarrow, 1988). This is most evident in the case of the UK privatisation programme, where it is believed that...

Long waiting times for inpatient treatment in the UK National Health Service have been a source of popular and political concern, and therefore a target for policy initiatives. In the London Patient Choice Project, patients at risk of breaching inpatient waiting time targets were offered the...

This document describes the findings of a statistical analysis of the determinants of utilisation of National Health Service inpatient facilities by small areas in England. It forms part of a study by the University of York commissioned by the NHS Executive. The primary purpose of the study was...

This report describes results from research funded by the Health Foundation under its Quest for Quality and Improved Performance (QQuIP) initiative. It builds on our earlier report for the Health Foundation – The link between health care spending and health outcomes: evidence from English...

The purpose of this research is to examine, in experimental oligopoly markets, (a) whether parallel pricing patterns emerge when communication among players is limited to cheap talk announcements; (b) whether such pricing patterns, if they emerge, lead to payoffs that exceed those players would...

We relate the sources of innovation market failure to the dominant mode of sectoral innovation and outline mechanisms for public support of innovation that target specific sources of innovation market failure.