Increased coordination in public transport—which mechanisms are available?

After several years of New Public Management reforms within public transport, coordination seems to receive increased attention. With examples of actual as well as suggested changes taken from Denmark, Sweden and the UK the aim of the article is to analyse and classify the mechanisms utilized and suggested to increase coordination between core stakeholders within passenger railway services and bus services. Four distinctive mechanisms of coordination are suggested, namely organisational coordination, contractual coordination, partnership coordination and discursive coordination. Each coordination mechanism has its strengths and failures. The article also debates to what extent the mechanisms conflict with three core characteristics of New Public Management: Unbundling of the public sector into corporatized units; more contract-based competitive provision; and greater emphasis on output controls.     

DELAYED OVERSHOOTING AND REAL EXCHANGE RATE PERSISTENCE IN AN IMPERFECT INFORMATION MODEL

Recent studies have pointed out that monetary shocks in sticky price models cannot generate real exchange rates that exhibit delayed overshooting and are highly persistent. This paper demonstrates that such exchange rate dynamics can be generated by incorporating incomplete information about the true nature of the monetary shock into a standard New Keynesian model of a small open economy.     

The Path to Service Encounter Performance in Public and Private ‘Bureaucracies’

This article examines the evolution of building societies against a background of environmental change. By the application of specific analytical measures developed by Ansoff five distinct periods of change can be isolated. Key events in the environment have become progressively more novel, less predictable and costlier to deal with, which, in turn, has necessitated both operational and strategic redirection.     

Distributional effects of environmental taxes on transportation: evidence from Engel curves in the United States

Indirect taxes on transportation activities that pollute can correct externalities and close the gaps between private and social costs. However, policy makers often find such Pigou taxes difficult to implement because of political resistance due to possibly adverse affects on equity. For this reason it is important to assess the distributional aspects of environmental levies. This article estimates properties of the demand for transportation in parametric and non-parametric analyses of Consumer Expenditure Surveys for the United States and finds patterns in the resulting set of Engel curves. Private transportation using air flights and new cars has Engel elasticity above unity while public transportation via mass transit has Engel elasticity below unity. The findings can be interpreted in an important way since they show that a differentiated scheme of environmental taxes on transportation may function progressively. A Pigou scheme with larger taxes on modes of transportation that pollute more appears to coincide with larger levies on luxury modes preferred by richer households.     

Strategic Regulation Policy in the Internet

Some countries are importers while others are exporters of global backbone connectivity. At the same time, input components such as local access are non-traded. This paper analyzes a non-cooperative regulatory game between importing and exporting countries, assuming that the prices of both traded and non-traded inputs can be regulated. We show that exporting countries choose a more restrictive regulation of non-traded goods than importing countries do. We further show that a requirement of international non-discrimination may hurt importing countries, and give firms producing traded inputs incentives to invest in quality degradation.     

Wood Fuel or Carbon Sink? Aspects of Forestry in the Climate Question

This paper discusses and contrasts two mainroles of forestry in light of the debate on theglobal climate. As the main problem is relatedto the increases of the CO₂-concentrationin the atmosphere, forests may be viewed aspart of the alleviation of the problem throughtheir function as (i) a source of biomass forenergy production, which may replace fossilfuels and thus indirectly reduceCO₂-emissions, and as (ii) carbon storage,since a growing forest extracts atmosphericCO₂ and fixes it as carbon in biomass. Inthe Scandinavian forestry, logging residues areincreasingly being used for energy production.In this paper the value of forests as a sourceof bioenergy is added to the traditional timbervalue. Formulated as a joint production modelwithin the Faustmann framework, the effect ofthis addition on the optimal rotation length isdiscussed. Based on data for spruce, thedominant species in the Scandinavian forestry,it is demonstrated that the rotation length isshortened compared to the standard Faustmannmodel. Shorter rotation length implies lesscarbon storage. Therefore, in this modelwithout explicit regard to the social carbonstorage value of the forest, the gains in termsof the climate problem from utilisation offorest biomass for energy production are beingdiminished by the value of reduced carbonstorage. The carbon value of the forest is thenadded to complete the model, with the effect ofincreasing the rotation length, a result thatis well known in the literature. Finally, theempirical effects of the interaction of thesetwo climate-related value elements of theforest are discussed.     

Trends in living conditions and satisfaction among poorer older South Africans: objective and subjective indicators of quality of life in the October Household Survey

The majority of South Africa's older population is income poor and lives in multigeneration households. Since the first democratically elected government came into power in 1994, South Africans have been promised ‘a better life for all’. A range of policies and programmes has been implemented to improve the living standards and quality of life of the poor. The article asks how the older poor have benefited from government interventions in the period 1995–8. Drawing on data compiled from Statistics South Africa's household surveys in 1995 and 1998 (n=20 000–30 000 households), a set of over 35 objective and subjective indicators broken down by income and younger and older households is reviewed. Older households include at least one member over 60 years of age. Results show that access to services and opportunities improves systematically from poor to rich households. Major material gains for the poor and older households during the review period include access to clean water, electricity and home ownership. Older poor households with better access to services and opportunities are more likely to express overall satisfaction with their living circumstances. The study concludes that the most effective mechanism for poverty alleviation appears to be the non-contributory, means-tested state old-age pension, which lifts some households out of the most disadvantaged bottom income group. Policies under discussion promise further opportunities for empowering poor households with older members.