Service Competitiveness – An Anglo-US Study

This article reports on the latest in a series of international comparisons of management practices and performance outcomes of industries in various countries. Here, it is the service industries in the UK and the US which come under the microscope. Among the companies surveyed, there were more world-class performers in the US than the UK, but also more low performers. The concluding part of the article is diagnostic – the authors also suggest measures which could improve performance.     

Does prenatal WIC participation improve birth outcomes? New evidence from Florida

We study the effects of prenatal receipt of nutritional and educational services provided by the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) on birth outcomes. Our identification strategy consists of two elements: (1) identifying families in a very tight income range surrounding the WIC eligibility threshold; and (2) exploiting a policy change that differentially influenced the WIC takeup rates of the families on each side of the eligibility threshold. We conduct this analysis by merging three large statewide administrative datasets from Florida concerning all births during the period 1997–2001. We match the birth records of infants and the school records of their older siblings in order to relatively precisely identify “marginally eligible” and “marginally ineligible” families that are very similar in their observable characteristics. We find that WIC participation has no effect on mean birth weight and gestational age, but substantially reduces the likelihood of adverse birth outcomes, e.g. birth weights below 2500 g.     

The art of designing markets

Traditionally, markets have been viewed as simply the confluence of supply and demand. But to function properly, they must be able to attract a sufficient number of buyers and sellers, induce participants to make their preferences clear, and overcome congestion by providing both enough time to make choices and a speedy means of registering them. Solutions to these challenges are the province of market design--a blend of game theory and experimental economics. Roth, a professor of both business and economics at Harvard, is a leading market designer. He and his colleagues have rescued failing markets by, for example, designing labor clearinghouses through which U.S. doctors get their first jobs and auctions through which the Federal Communications Commission sells licenses for parts of the radio broadcast spectrum. They have also created marketlike allocation procedures that involve neither prices nor an exchange of money; these include systems for assigning children to schools in Boston and New York and for facilitating exchanges of kidneys. Computers enable the design of "smart markets" that combine the inputs of users in complex ways: In kidney exchange, they run through every possible match of donors and recipients to arrange the greatest possible number of transplants. In the future, computers may make it possible to auction bundled goods, such as airport takeoff and landing slots. As online markets--like those for jobs and dating--proliferate, a growing understanding of markets in general will provide virtually limitless opportunities for market design.     

Weak versus strong domination in a market with indivisible goods

The core of a market in indivisible goods can be defined in terms of strong domination or weak domination. The core defined by strong domination is always non-empty, but may contain points which are unstable in a dynamic sense. However, it is shown that there are always stable points in the core, and a characterization is obtained. The core defined by weak domination is always non-empty when there is no indifference, and has no instability problems. In this case, the core coincides with the unique competitive allocation.