Public‐private partnerships versus traditional procurement: Innovation incentives and information gathering

A government agency wants a facility to be built and managed to provide a public service. Two different modes of provision are considered. In a public‐private partnership, the tasks of building and managing are bundled, whereas under traditional procurement, these tasks are delegated to separate private contractors. The two provision modes differ in their incentives to innovate and to gather private information about future costs to adapt the service provision to changing circumstances. The government agency’s preferred mode of provision depends on the information‐gathering costs, the costs of innovation efforts, and the degree to which effort is contractible.     

Towards Legitimate Water Governance?

Abstract

This article addresses how and to what extent a governance mode can legitimately provide public services. A single case study of the partially privatized Berlin Waterworks is used to analyse the level of input and output legitimacy as well as potential trade-offs between the criteria emerging in a public–private partnership (PPP) in the water supply and sanitation sectors. While the Berlin Waterworks as a PPP leads to a lower level of resource protection and public acceptance, it leads to a higher level of efficiency and profitability than under the previous public model.     

Exit as governance: do blockholders affect corporate innovation in large US firms?

Using a sample of large US firms, this study shows that blockholders in combination with liquidity can contribute positively to innovation (R&D investments). We contribute to the literature on managerial myopia that has focused mainly on large owners and their type (short-term/long-term). Our results are in line with recent theoretical studies arguing that blockholders in combination with market liquidity can mitigate managerial myopia, as suggested by the exit model of governance. The results indicate that blockholders can be efficient in resolving agency problems and that they can enhance long-term prosperity, even when the individual blockholder investment horizon may not be long.     

How far can reduced childcare prices push female labour supply?

Exploiting exogenous variation in childcare prices stemming from a childcare price reform, this paper estimates effects of reductions in childcare costs on female labour supply. The reform introduced a cap on childcare prices, and lead to considerable reductions in prices depending on family type and region of residence. Since the price is determined by a handful of observed characteristics, we are able to match households that are similar in all relevant aspects, but experienced quite different price changes. Our difference-in-differences regression matching estimates are very precise, and close to zero.     

Yahoo!骑虎难下

唐骏认为。雅虎再次复兴的机会不大,虽然它有很多现金和很好的资源。但是它缺乏了创新的文化和动力,现在更像一个投资公司.     

Marketing “Frankenfood”

ABSTRACT

Most visual package research in marketing to date tests only the main effects of certain visual package elements in artificially isolated experimental contexts, though, in the store, these elements are presented to the shopper in active visual circumstances. Most food packages are highly cluttered with a number of visual and text elements all competing for the shopper's limited attention; this calls into question the external validity, and therefore the usability for practitioner purposes, of these results. Given that marketers often rely on a single visual element as the sole carrier of some particular promotional message, it is critical to ascertain whether single visual elements can break through such visual clutter to effectively deliver their promotional messages to the shopper. In this study, we manipulate the level of background activity of packages while testing the ability of one visual package element—its overall shape—to affect one particular piece of package information of concern to food shoppers— appearance of size or volume. Surprisingly, our results show that the main effect of package shape type on volume perception not only remains robust under visually cluttered conditions, but that the effect is actually heightened for certain, more geometrically complex package shape types. Managerial implications are discussed.