Quality Defined by Public Service Users—The Case of the Avon Probation Service

Avon Probation Service and Bristol Business School have developed a means of assessing user-defined quality of service provision. Building on that work, this article reports on an attempt to involve 'consumers' in devising criteria by which they can judge the performance of a public service. It begins with a review of the debate about quality in public service management, arguing that it is a mistake to import uncritically 'business' approaches to quality into the public services. The impossibility of defining a uniform set of expectations of the probation service's role is a major reason why conventional notions of quality cannot be grafted directly on to public service management. The case study of the probation service suggests broader lessons for public services which wish to involve users in addressing quality issues.     

A bully pulpit

It is pointed out that in an economy with only one resource and price-making firms, virtually any price vector is a market-clearing vector if profits are distributed as dividends and consumers correctly anticipate these dividends. It is argued that the resulting model has been useful in comparing competition and monopoly, direct and indirect taxation, and first and second best and has the potential for shedding light on many other questions in welfare economics. A painless procedure for verifying the counterintuitive fundamental proposition is provided.Presidential Address presented at the Forty-Second International Atlantic Economic Conference, Washington, DC, October 10–13, 1996.     

Augustin cournot and neoclassical economics

This paper compares Cournot's exposition of elasticity of demand and the theory of the firm with modern exposition. In the case of the theory of the firm, this comparison is accomplished by translating the modern textbook exposition into Cournot's mathematics. It is demonstrated that Cournot's exposition translates into current usage in all cases but that the degree of convolution in the translation process varies from case to case. For elasticity, only trivial algebraic manipulation is involved. For monopoly, the inverse derivative rule translates Cournot's exposition into current usage. The case of perfect competition is much more complicated. Although Cournot gets the same result as current theory, his mathematics doesn't translate directly into current usage. But a comparison in the text that doesn't appear in his mathematics suggests that he considered the modern derivation but chose to use another derivation. One reason for doing this is rather obvious. It fits better into Cournot's unified approach to the theory of the firm. It might also be judged more elegant and mathematically precise. With regard to oligopoly, Cournot provided, in a different contest, the analytical structure that is now used in IO to analyze differentiated oligopoly. It is retierated that Cournot had a general method for finding equilibria for non-cooperative games and was aware of the fact that his method was more general than a single application. The relation between Cournot equilibria and Nash equilibria is discussed. The author benefited from comments by Richard R. Ruble and a referee, but is responsible for all errors.     

Do All Foreign Direct Investment Inflows Benefit the Local Economy?

The present study measures the impact of FDI inflows on the local economies of the US states that receive most of the FDI inflows in the country. It appears that FDI inflows in manufacturing have rather weak effects on local employment and wages in most of the states in the sample. However, these results are primarily due to the industry composition of the FDI. FDI inflows in Printing and Publishing, Transportation Equipment and Instruments have positive effects on local employment and wages, while FDI inflows in Leather and Stone/Clay/Glass have detrimental effects on local labour markets in most of the states in the sample. These findings indicate the importance of industry characteristics in evaluating the effects of FDI inflows on local communities. Also, they emphasise the need for US states to selectively target and attract FDI inflows in specific industries.     

Ownership dispersion as a second-best counterstrategy against monopoly

A literature on second-best pricing as counterstrategy against monopoly has evolved in economics. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that ownership dispersion through forced divestiture can be more effective in restricting the social damage of monopoly. Economists generally hold an ordinal view of utility. To the extent that the second-best literature suggests the possibility of reducing dead-weight loss through counterpricing, most economics would accept counterpricing as welfare increasing and reject ownership dispersion. The example presented in this paper suggests that this mindset may cause us to overlook promising alternatives.     

DIVERSIFICATION IN THE REAL ESTATE PORTFOLIO

This study investigates primarily the relationship between portfolio size and the reduction of return variation in real estate portfolios and attempts to provide some notion of what represents an “adequate” level of naive diversification. The study also examines the proportional components of the total risk in real estate investment. The results provide information on the relative percentage of total risk accounted for by systematic or “market” factors.