BROADCASTING LICENCE FEE SETTLEMENTS IN THE UK AND GERMANY

In October 2010 the British and German broadcasting licence fees were settled. In the UK, the BBC's worst settlement in its history appears moderate compared with other cuts in public sector spending. However, whereas the near future of the Corporation and public service broadcasting (PSB) in the UK may lie in the provision of narrower services and competitive funding, in Germany the current change of the fee towards an excise duty make ARD and ZDF, the two key German PSB organisations, appear stronger than ever. The implementation of the new model will harm individual freedom, commercial broadcasting operators and the taxpayer.     

Competing with the Public Sector in Broadcasting

There are two public sector broadcasters in the UK: the BBC and Channel 4. In their different ways, their behaviour attracts criticism from the private sector. However, this critique is unfocused and potentially counter-productive. A more efficient – or privatised – public sector would create greater, not lesser, problems for the private sector. The allegations of abuse of privilege and unfair competition may be justified, but the private sector needs a coherent alternative rationale for public funding of broadcasting before it can expect to win a public and political debate.     

Public Service Broadcasting: A Paradox of our Time

The broadcasting industry remains the last refuge of belief in the virtues of public ownership and public control. The tradition of the free press, privately owned and independent of government, is foreign to broadcasting. The conditions that make free competition possible in broadcasting are now becoming a reality in the UK, but government policy is to strengthen public service broadcasting.     

Anti-Public Broadcasting

The BBC has constantly sought to justify its state support by claiming that it must offer 'public-service' broadcasting. David Graham (right), of Channel 4's Diverse Reports, argues that the BBC's position is both a misunderstanding of economic reality and a brake upon the development of consumer choice and diversity in the market. The Government's 'protection of the well-heeled' imposes 'middle-class tastes on ordinary men and women'.     

The New Competition in Broadcasting: Trick or Treat?

The broadcasting reforms of the 1990s attempted to combine increased competition with the preservation of the public service ideal. The reforms were called into question when it became clear that the production quality was being undermined by poor information flows and excessive transaction costs. For competition in broadcasting to flourish, closer attention needs to be paid tothe institutional preconditions of effective contracting.     

Platform strategy of terrestrial TV broadcasters

Terrestrial broadcasting network is the main delivery platform of terrestrial broadcasters and its coverage represents the capacity. We study economic impacts of coverage on TV service markets, which consist of broadcasters and pay‐TV operators with retransmission, by dividing the market into “inside” and “outside” the coverage. Our results suggest that the broadcaster ends up with two extreme options in equilibrium: not operating networks or operating networks at a full capacity. However, the former option is not desirable if the retransmission fee changes according to the coverage. On the basis of the main results derived, implications for broadcasters and the government are discussed.     

Shifting from Undersupply to Oversupply: Does NHS Workforce Planning Need a Paradigm Shift?

The National Health Service in England is currently halfway through the most austere decade in its history. Finding ways to improve health care efficiency is crucial to ensure the sustainability of the health system. While evidence of supply‐induced demand (SID) has often been used as an economic argument to restrict labour supply, in the UK the risks of SID may be much less than in health care systems with more deregulated entry into the market post‐qualification and with fee‐for‐service payment systems. This article focuses on the problem of staff shortages in nursing. We argue that, although an oversupply of some types of labour can add to cost pressures by increasing demand for health care services and that the cost of training staff is high, undersupply and poor labour planning lead to unintended consequences such as poor labour productivity. As a result there is a case for public policy to target an oversupply of nurses in the future. If government reforms to nurse funding help, they are to be welcomed.     

体育组织视角下的体育赞助管理研究

许多大型国际赛事其赞助金额及赞助的收益一次次屡创新高,已是全球奥林匹克运动会中仅次于电视转播权利金的第二大经费来源。作为体育赛事的主办机构,要想获得企业持续投资,应该对体育赛事本身进行良好的营销,认真做好赞助方面的管理、保障投资方的利益,是非常必要的。因此,从体育组织角度研究体育赞助的管理,达到多赢,成为一个重要的研究议题。     

THE FUTURE OF THE NEWS IN THE DIGITAL ERA

Technical developments in the field of journalism and broadcasting are changing the shape of both media. Many of these developments are very welcome. However, there is a danger that the quality of journalism may fall and that part of society may disengage from news coverage. This may require a policy response but not necessarily the continued support of a single state-funded public service broadcaster.     

The Economic Crisis in Professional Football

Football clubs have only themselves to blame for their current financial malaise, highlighted by the recent decision to turn down an exclusive offer for broadcasting right from BBC and ITV. They have refused to acknowledge changes in consumer demand; they have not advertised, nor shifted their grounds to more densely populated areas, and have made no efforts to attract more women to matches. They have cushioned themselves against change at the cost of increasing inefficiency.     

Determinants of Public Service Broadcasting Size

We investigate the issue of whose interest is reflected in selecting the size of public service broadcasting (PSB). We examine two different approaches: (1) the public interest theory, where PSB size is selected to maximise citizens’ welfare and (2) the public choice theory, where PSB size is determined by self-interested politicians. Based on the foundations of these two views, we derive theoretical predictions about how PSB size changes with an increase in political competition. Then, we test these predictions using panel data from OECD countries over the period 1993–2010, and we find that the degree of electoral competition is negatively associated with PSB size. We conclude that PSB size does not reflect the public interest theory, but rather upholds the public choice theory, especially the politicians’ rent-seeking motive.     

灯,等灯:CSR3.0来了

从简单捐赠到社会创新,英特尔公司试图引领CSR的发展潮流颁奖大会的条幅被堂而皇之地改头换面成"搬桨大会",引号都没打一个。为解释这一古怪的概念,一个看上去更古怪的男孩扮演荒岛鲁滨逊,一人分饰四角、诠释"先锋倡导浆"、"协同合作桨"和"科技应用桨"究竟是怎样划动了"社会创新"这艘大船。如果你在5月6日的上海1933老场坊见到上述这一幕,心目中英特尔的企业形象,还会是那无处不在的"灯,等灯等     

The Completely Decentralized City: The Case for Benefits Based Public Finance

An alternative to centralized top-down city governance is a multi-level bottom-up structure based on small neighborhood contractual communities. This paper analyzes the voting rules and public finances of decentralized, contractual urban governance and the likely outcome of such a constitutional structure, substantially reduced transfer seeking or rent seeking. Tax and service substitution, with lower-level funding and services substituting for higher-level public finance, is the general process by which the governance would devolve. Land rent is the most feasible source of such decentralized public finance, and local communities could also engage in local currency and credit services. Some empirical examples demonstrate the implementation of some of these governance structures.     

Strategy in the Public Sector: Management in the Wilderness

ABSTRACT The central question addressed in this paper is ‘Why have organizational strategies emerged in the public sector?’ Two broad answers are suggested. First, ‘strategies’ profile the organization through identifying aims, outputs and outcomes. Public services must, now, provide such transparency in order to secure on‐going funding from government bodies. Once ‘strategies’ are being produced, they also offer an organizational vision that potential additional funding agencies can buy into (with both commitment and money). And public services are short of resources. Second, ‘strategies’ signal greater devolved responsibility in the public sector for both acquiring resources and achieving results. They enable the inclusion of managerial priorities and values in setting the direction of public services. And politicians desire more control over the professionals that dominate public services whilst, simultaneously, wanting to make them more responsible for outcomes. This article explores the growth of strategic planning in a particular area of the public sector – the national parks. Strategies as ‘dormant documents’ and strategies as ‘funding pitches’ are discussed. It is suggested that, in the public sector, strategies should be the object of strategy.     

Evaluating efficient public good provision: Theory and evidence from a generalised conditional efficiency model for public libraries

Provision of most public goods (e.g., health care, libraries, education, police, fire protection, utilities) can be characterized by a two-stage production process. In the first-stage, basic inputs (e.g., labor and capital) are used to generate service potential (e.g., opening hours, materials), which is then, in the second-stage, transformed into observed outputs (e.g., school outcomes, library circulation, crimes solved). As final outputs are also affected by demand-side factors, conflating both production stages likely leads to biased inferences about public productive (in)efficiency and its determinants. Hence, this paper uses a specially tailored, fully non-parametric efficiency model allowing for both outlying observations and heterogeneity to analyse efficient public good provision in stage one only. We thereby employ a dataset comprising all 290 Flemish public libraries. Our findings suggest that ideological stance of the local government, wealth and density of the local population and source of library funding (i.e., local funding versus intergovernmental transfers) strongly affect library productive efficiency.     

Participation and study decisions in a public system of higher education

We analyze the decision whether to participate and where and what to study in a public system of higher education, based on a unique dataset of all eligible high school pupils in an essentially closed region (Flanders). We find that pupils perceive the available institutions and programs as close substitutes relative to the outside option. This implies an ambiguous role for travel costs: they hardly affect the participation decision, but have a strong impact on the decision where and what to study. To illustrate how our empirical results can inform the debate on reforming public systems, we assess the effects of tuition fee increases. Uniform cost‐based tuition fee increases achieve most of the welfare gains; the additional gains from fee differentiation are relatively limited. These welfare gains are quite large under conservative assumptions on the social cost of public funds, and there is a substantial redistribution from students to outsiders. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

企业创新与政府创新公共服务平台的博弈分析

为了促使企业积极利用创新公共服务平台,文章建立了创新型企业与政府之间的博弈模型,从理论层面证明了创新型企业积极利用创新公共服务平台将有益于企业快速达到利润目标,同时政府应该加强公共服务平台的建设。最后,利用Matlab软件进行数值模拟分析,结果表明,创新型企业应该与政府相互合作。但是,当合作达到一定程度后,创新型企业和政府应谨慎投入。     

Training standards as a policy option? The regulation of the fitness industry

This article examines whether the regulation of service work through a ‘licence to practice’ can be effective in raising skill levels and improving the working conditions of employees. Research from the fitness industry on the impact of self‐regulation of training standards is used to explore some of the difficulties of this type of policy option.