At present the Department of Transport allocates road use costs according to concepts of fair attribution, and road user charges for commercial vehicles are intended to cover these costs. The paper calculates the efficient road user charge - the marginal social cost of highway use - and compares...

The feasibility of systemic reforms may depend on their distributional consequences. The shift to a market economy can be expected to increase wage differentials and unemployment, which will have an adverse effect on income distribution. Income tax reform and the change in the system of consumer...

Implicit contract theory has been successful in explaining wage rigidity but not unemployment. We argue that the theory has paid insufficient attention to (i) the general equilibrium aspects and (ii) constraints limiting the set of feasible contracts. Implicit, as opposed to explicit contracts,...

The British Government plans to privatise the British Gas Corporation in the autumn of 1986. The paper attempts to predict the possible consequences for the European gas market of privatisation, and their consequent implications for the United Kingdom. Much will depend on whether the Government...

The EU faces challenges in reforming the Gas and Electricity Directives to implement the single market in electricity and gas. The Paper argues that there is unfinished business in the areas of regulation, restructuring, encouraging proper risk management through contracting, and designing...

Fiscal reform is central to the process of transforming a Soviet-type economy to a market economy, for with the emergence of a significant private sector, the boundaries between the public and private sectors needs to be more sharply drawn. The paper draws lessons from the experience of the...

This Paper studies the interaction between repeated auctions of rail franchises of different lengths, uncertainty, and incentives for investment in rolling stock, following the privatization of British Rail. Theoretical predictions are tested empirically using a unique panel of data. Theory...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how energy policy should respond to the changes in the organisation of energy sector associated with privatisation. The paper begins with a brief review of how energy policy was perceived before the 1973 oil shock, and the lessons learned from...

The inefficiency of Soviet-type economies results from their monopolized production structure, which makes soft budget constraints almost inevitable, as enterprises have bargaining power and must face expropriative tax rates for macroeconomic stability. Systemic reform aims to improve...

The two central economic problems facing Hungary are its large foreign debt and its relatively poor rate of growth over the 1980s. The paper examines some of the reform issues facing Hungary, starting with the tax reforms of 1988 and 1989, but concentrating on the importance of creating...