A paper by social psychologists proclaimed that, for UK citizens, it could be shown that being born in the summer half-year was associated with a significantly higher belief in being lucky, compared with being born in the winter half-year. Are we that much determined by nonsocial forces? A test...

All too often, ascriptions to the EU as being 'neoliberal' or 'interventionist' have been made from both sides of the political and academic sphere. However, the evidence to prove these assessments are mostly only implied. This paper takes a closer look, based on textual evidence and using the...

Most of the literature devoted to analysing public–private partnership (PPP) contracts focuses on issues related to competition. This article intends to study a less frequently considered matter, the financial clauses of these contracts as steering tools of the PPP.

This research locates the use of public private partnerships (PPP) within the new public management (NPM) reforms that have swept the Australian public sector. Empirical evidence from policy documents and a case study of a failed public hospital project in Victoria are used to illustrate...

Because consumer prices and trade quantities tend to exhibit stronger rigidities than do nominal exchange rates, trade balances usually respond to currency appreciations and depreciations only after a time lag. This dynamic adjustment – depicted as correlations between deviations in a...

We analyse the international process of standardising the so-called third-generation (3G) mobile communications systems as well as China's 3G policy in order to shed light on the relationship between regulation and innovation. For this analysis, we propose a transaction cost-theoretic framework...

This paper considers the relationships between public and private organisations entering into public–private partnerships within the context of NPM. After offering a brief discussion of similarities and differences between public and private organisations and their relationships, it...

Using a neo-institutional lens, this paper analyses the formation and evolution of the procedures, norms and conventions – both official and unofficial – of the French approach to managing sport. In the 1960s and 1970s, a centralising model for the public service was hegemonic,...

Enhanced communication between citizens and decision makers furthering participation in public decision making is essential to ease today's democratic deficit. However, it is difficult to sort out the most important public inputs from a large number of comments and questions. We propose an...

In the last 30 years, specific primary energy use in the German steel industry has decreased by about 30%. This decrease can be attributed to both structural changes in the steel industry (from basic oxygen steel to electric arc furnace steel) and to the improved energy efficiency of new...