Regulation, deregulation and public bureaucracy

Abstract. In 1982, a new Liberal-Conservative government launched a grand deregulatory campaign as part of its programme for restoring the Danish economy. After some initial success, the campaign lost momentum. The government gradually realised that it was difficult to mobilise both economic interests and public opinion for the cause of deregulation. Bureaucratic resistance and disinterest among economic interest organisations together with the erosion of political commitment to deregulation after a couple of years stopped the campaign. Still, some results were reached where least expected.     

Privatization,information and incentives

In this paper the choice between public and private provision of goods and services is considered. In practice, both modes of operation involve significant delegation of authority, and thus appear quite similar in some respects. The argument here is that the main difference between the two modes concerns the transactions costs faced by the government when attempting to intervene in the delegated production activities. Such intervention is generally less costly under public ownership than under private ownership. The greater ease of intervention under public ownership can have its advantages; but the fact that a promise not to intervene is more credible under private production can also have beneficial incentive effects. The fundamental privatization theorem (analogous to the fundamental theorem of welfare economics) is presented, providing conditions under which government production cannot improve upon private production. The restrictiveness of these conditions is evaluated.     

Inequity and risk aversion in sequential public good games

Behavioral hypotheses have recently been introduced into public-choice theory (Ostrom in American Political Science Review 92:1–22, 1998). Nevertheless, the individual intrinsic preferences which drive decisions in social dilemmas have not yet been empirically identified. This paper asks whether risk and inequity preferences are behind agents’ behavior in a sequential public good game. The experimental results show that risk aversion is negatively correlated with the contribution decision of first movers. Second movers who are averse to advantageous inequity free-ride less and reciprocate more than do others. Our results emphasize the importance of strategic uncertainty for the correct understanding of which preferences influence cooperation in social dilemmas.     

论官僚制的反功能

自韦伯提出理性官僚制的概念以来,许多学者对官僚制提出了批评,其中有一些学者提出了官僚制的反功能问题,认为官僚制不仅仅存在正功能,而且会产生反功能问题,如效率低下、繁文缛节、保守主义等等.更有学者在官僚制反功能的基础上,提出来官僚制病理学研究的问题.本文首先检视了官僚制的反功能及官僚制病理学研究.其次在此基础上,尝试性地分析了官僚制的反功能及病理学研究对我国行政改革的启示.     

Privatization Revisited

Privatization encompasses an extraordinary range of activities involving the delivery of physical services, the delivery of social services, and even regulatory enforcement. When deciding whether to privatize, how to privatize, and to whom to privatize, policymakers should keep a number of criteria in mind. This paper specifies such criteria and reviews some of the evidence on privatization's effects.     

Privatization and cost reduction

In this paper several examples of government contracts with private firms are examined to see how experience conforms to a principal-agent model of cost minimization via competitive bidding and how important are the many qualifications to the model. Fifteen cases of local government contracting are examined.The course of private contracting is not always smooth — as judged by the many contract disruptions observed and by the number of cities that believe they are no longer saving money by contracting and those which have resumed public production. It also seems to be the case, however, that competition generally reduces initial costs, that in many cases cost savings persist, that it is possible to stimulte competition, and that providing for continual interaction, as contrasted with simply monitoring performance, can prevent disruption.     

Privatization and the Courts: How Judicial Structures Shaped German Privatization

This article examines how legal institutional structures shaped the process of East German privatization by the Treuhandanstalt. It argues that the courts, as an important venue for oversight and accountability, were central to achieving the rapid and narrowly defined privatization carried out by the agency. Moreover, the experience of privatization after 1989 suggests the courts played a far more important role in shaping economic policy than one would have expected from traditional scholarship on public agencies, the courts, or the German legal system.     

Tools for Governing: Privatization, Public-Private Partnerships, and Entrepreneurial Management

Books reviewed:
E.S. Savas, Privatization and Public-Private Partnerships
Pauline Vaillancourt Rosenau, ed., Public-Private Policy Partnerships
Van R. Johnston, ed., Entrepreneurial Management and Public Policy
Paul J. Andrisani, Simon Hakim, and Eva Leeds, eds., Making Government Work: Lessons from America's Governors and Mayors