Trust-Based Relationships in Local Government Contracting

This article examines issues of trust and competition as they relate to a number of services provided by British local government. The first section outlines the changing policy context of competition for local authority services and is followed by a discussion of the nature of trust under contracting, drawing on elements of (primarily) economic theory to identify the features of contracting which we would expect to find in a 'low trust world'. The authors ask whether these features appear to be present in contracting and point to some features of the CCT legislative framework which may help to explain this. After reviewing private sector practice, the extent to which it could be replicated under CCT is examined.     

Fostering the capital-goods sector in LDCs

The conventional arguments in favour of the production of capital goods by LDCs are based on comparative advantage, the possibility of designs appropriate to indigenous factor proportions, and the externalities conferred on other sectors. These and other arguments are inducing the governments of many middle-income countries to more intensively foster the development of the machinery sector. This paper examines the analytic and empirical bases of the conventional arguments and finds a considerably more complex picture than that contained in earlier studies.     

THE LOW EARNINGS OF AGRICULTURAL WORKERS: A SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH*

This paper shows that agricultural economists have tended to account for the low incomes of agricultural workers by utilising the economic model which explains low returns to agriculture as a whole. This aproach is called low returns to agriculture as a whole. This approach is called into question by referring to regional data on workers' earnings and farmers' incomes. A sociological approach is outlined which takes account of the degree of choice open to agricultural workers to accept the earnings and conditions of agriculture.     

FINANCIAL LEASE ANALYSIS: CONSISTENT AND INCONSISTENT APPROACHES

This paper evaluates lease-purchase analysis methods which assume that leasing provides 100 percent financing and that purchasing involves a mixture of debt and equity finance. Such analyses are being used in Australia particularly in the promotion of leveraged leasing. It is argued that this method is unsound and that analysis of financial leasing should focus on the effects of leasing on the financial risk of the lessee.     

Agri-Food Strategy — Rationale and Themes

Challenge for Growth: An Agri-Food Strategy for Canada was announced by the Honourable Eugene Whelan on July 17, 1981. The main rationale behind the strategy is that there is a bright long-term future for the agri-food sector provided certain constraints to increased production and improved marketing can be overcome. The strategy looks at the next twenty years and identifies constraints to achieving the full potential of the agri-food system, along with possible solutions to overcoming those roadblocks. The potential for Canada's agri-food sector, given a certain expectation for world agri-food prices, would permit an increase of two-thirds in output by the turn of the century with a doubling of the 1980 current dollar value of agricultural production.     

Social Efficiency and the Provision of Collective Services

Abstract . Government inefficiency arises from failure of preference, production, and delivery The first occurs when government produces a different mix of collective services than is socially desirable; the second when government produces services less efficiently than it could at given cost levels; the third when the targeted beneficiaries fail to receive the intended level of services. A taxonomy of causes of each type of failure is developed and the conclusion drawn that some inefficiency is inevitable when collective services are provided. At issue is how much inefficiency should be tolerated when the gains to society from the provision of collective services outweigh the costs and how existing inefficiencies can be reduced to lower levels.