We analyze the contracting out of public service provision to private firms and compare the performance of for-profit and non-for-profit firms. We consider two alternative settings.In the first,the firm has control rights, as under the UK's Private Finance Initiative(PFI). In the second,the...

We study the incentives of regulated firms to acquire costly information under price cap regulation.We show that revenue sharing plans, in the spirit proposed by Sappington and Weisman(1996), can provide greater incentives for information acquisition than pure price capping and increase social...

The paper focuses on the organization of institutions designed to resolve disputes between two parties, when some information is not veri…able and decision makers may have vested preferences. It shows that the choice of how much discretional power to grant to the decision maker and who...

We provide a new rationale for commercial activities by non-profit organizations whose primary concern is to supply mission output. We show that investment in commercial activity may be used to insure mission output against the uncertainty of donations, though possibly at the cost of lower...

We model public-private partnershios in building and managing facilities for the provision of public services. In particular,we analyze both the desirability of bundling the building and management operations, and the optimal allocation of ownership between the public sector and private firms....

We use an incomplete-contract approach to compare contracting out by a public sector agency with the delegation of contracting out to a public-private partnership(PPP) that is a joint venture between private and sector agents. The PPP maximizes a linear combination of profit and social benefit....

We analyze how reputational concerns of arbitrators affect the quality of their decision making. We assume that arbitrators differ in their ability to evaluate the correct decision and that information acquisition by arbitrators is costly and unobservable. We show that reputational concerns...

In an incomplete contract setting, we analyze the contracting out of public service provision, comparing the performance of for-profit and not-for-profit private firms. Two institutional arrangements are considered, control rights lying either with the firm as under the UK's Private Finance...