Match Point Management — Gleichzeitig Kosten- und Marktperformance verbessern

Der Matchpoint entscheidet über Sieg oder Niederlage. Match Point Management zeigt, wie man Krisen meistert, indem man gleichzeitig Gewinn und Kosten verbessert — ohne in die Falle eines zyklischen Auf und Ab zu tappen.     

Solidarity and Probabilistic Target Rules

We consider a probabilistic approach to collective choice problems where a group of agents with single-peaked preferences have to decide on the level or location of a public good. We show that every probabilistic rule that satisfies Pareto efficiency and "solidarity" (population-monotonicity or replacement-domination) must equal a so-called target rule.     

THE HEALTHCARE VOUCHER: EMERGENCE,FORMATION AND DISSEMINATION

Market‐inspired healthcare reforms have been introduced in Sweden: Freedom of Choice in Healthcare in 1989 and the National Healthcare Guarantee in 2005. After the general election 2006 the idea of the Healthcare Voucher has followed. Built on a theoretical framework composed of Foucault's concept of 'discursive formation' supported by Butler's concept of the ‘performativity of discourse’ the purpose is to analyse the emergence, formation and dissemination of this idea into healthcare in Sweden. The Voucher is disseminated in a form reminiscent of a chain linking a series of texts, referring to each other and building on each other's formulations strengthening each other's messages. It circulates under designations such as healthcare voucher and money and seems to be disseminated by being combined with 'freedom of choice' forming the theme customer choice. The Healthcare Voucher then becomes a means of being able to realise an idea of a political nature, building markets in healthcare. The paper offers a way of analysing how ideas influence the policy agenda, in particular for the voucher/s. Distinctions could be made between the voucher idea and 'money following the patient' in quasi markets. A critical issue in introducing choice and competition, not explored here, is the issue of ‘cream skimming’.     

Notes on contributors

Abstract

Today, many public professionals feel estranged from the policy programmes they implement; that is, they experience ‘policy alienation’. This is of concern as, for satisfactory implementation, some identification with the policy is required. We conceptualize policy alienation based on the sociological concept of work alienation, and show how this can be used in policy implementation research. Studying a Dutch case of professionals implementing a new work disability decree, we observe how NPM practices increase policy alienation because of a perceived dysfunctional focus on efficiency and results. A large number of policy changes and stricter implementation rules further increased policy alienation.     

Strategy-Proof Probabilistic Decision Schemes for One-Dimensional Single-Peaked Preferences

Collective decision problems are considered with a finite number of agents who have single-peaked preferences on the real line. A probabilistic decision scheme assigns a probability distribution over the real line to every profile of reported preferences. The main result of the paper is a characterization of the class of unanimous and strategy-proof probabilistic schemes with the aid of fixed probability distributions that play a role similar to that of the phantom voters in H. Moulin (Public Choice35 (1980), 437-455). Thereby, the work of Moulin (1980) is extended to the probabilistic framework. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D71, D81.     

Contents Volume 22, 2002

Volume Contents

Contents Volume 22, 2002     

Knowledge Disclosure and Transmission in Buyer–Supplier Relationships

A buyer’s technical knowledge may increase the efficiency of its supplier. Suppliers, however, frequently maintain relationships with additional buyers. Knowledge disclosure then bears the risk of benefiting one’s own rival due to opportunistic knowledge transmission through the common supplier. We show that in one-shot relationships no knowledge disclosure takes place because the supplier has an incentive to transmit and, anticipating that, buyers refuse to disclose any of their knowledge. In repeated relationships knowledge disclosure is stabilized by larger technological proximity between buyers and suppliers and destabilized by the absolute value of the knowledge.