The development of an internal market in UK public sector health care has introduced hard budget constraints for those general practitioner purchasers who elect to hold their own budgets or 'funds'. Prescription medicines constitute an element of the fundholder's budget and a theoretical model...

The realisation that fast growing SMEs are major contributors to economic prosperity has seen these firms being increasingly attributed with a more central role in the development of wealth, innovation, employment and national competitiveness. Spatial proximity often positively affects knowledge...

Current research suggests that the process of knowledge creation is both networked and iterative. Synthesising the literature highlights a range of factors for analysis in knowledge-based industries. These factors are then used to examine the biotechnology sector in Queensland Australia,...

Pharmaceutical policy in the UK involves a trade-off between the interest of the National HealthService in controlling expenditure on drugs and the interest of the pharmaceutical industry inproviding an incentive for research and development. Since 1957, the Pharmaceutical PriceRegulation Scheme...

The GP fundholding scheme was introduced as part of the Conservative government’s 1991NHS reforms and abolished by the Labour government in 1998. This paper presents theargument that very little was learnt about the effectiveness of the scheme before its abolition.This was because there was no...

The regulation of drug prices is an excellent example of the type of tensions that are emerging inthe UK's new system of multi-level governance. Both the benefits and regulatory burden of thePharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS) are regionally concentrated. However, thoseregional...