The introduction of competition between service providers in industries with some sort of network - such as telecommunications, but also gas and electricity - has created the regulatory problem of access pricing. Where a service provider requires access to a network owned by another firm, how...

Unemployment has remained at relatively high levels across most European countries for a generation now. There have been a number of suggested explanations for this, with correspondingly different policy implications. Two of the major hypotheses relate, first, to the impact on the European...

Labour market flexibility is often portrayed as a key to the competitive success of the UK and US economies. We surveyed several hundred firms in the UK, and using the resulting data (on over 200 manufacturing firms) this paper investigates the relationships between firms' use of flexible work...

Changes in public policy and corporate strategy have enhanced the role of contracts as mechanisms of economic governance. The understanding that norms, standards and other forms of regulatory mechanism can affect the structure of incentives and the quality of contractual outcomes has helped to...

Technological innovation is said to be breaking down borders. The internet, the explosion of globalised financial markets, the increased foreign direct investment by transnational corporations—all are portrayed as creating a global market in which the nation state is little more than an...

The relationship between technology, productivity and employment is a complex one. Increased productivity can lead not just to increased market share, but through falling relative prices can help expand markets, and through product innovation can develop new markets. On the other hand, if demand...

The international economics of business and management has focused - both in the academic literature and in corporate and public policy discussions - increasingly on issues of globalisation, innovation and 'competitiveness'. These issues, and in particular their interrelation, are analysed in...

There is increasing emphasis being put on the need to be 'internationally competitive'. This imperative is being driven, it is argued, by the globalization of economic and corporate life. This 'globalization' is the subject of a burgeoning academic literature. To achieve and maintain the...

Privatisation of telecommunications across the globe over the 1980s and 1990s has thrown up various regulatory problems. There are many political and social reasons for governments desiring universal access; this paper sets these to one side to focus on the key economic rationale for having a...

This paper discusses a dispute heard in Britain in 1992 by the Copyright Tribunal concerning royalty rates for compositions used on records, and sets out a framework for analysing such problems, which can be summarized as follows. A recording requires inputs of at least three kinds — the...