The federal government should progressively allow new entrants to bid for some of the mail services currently provided by Canada Post, says a report released today by the C.D. Howe Institute. In “How Ottawa Can Deliver a Reformed Canada Post,” author Benjamin Dachis, Senior Policy Analyst at...

Empirical work shows that competition is important for promoting economic growth. However, in Japan the promotion of competition has long been compromised by ministerial guidance and exemptions from the competition law. Thus, the level and growth of productivity have been low in many...

Norwegian growth has been strong over the past decade. This development has been supported by the off-shore sector, but depleting oil reserves implies that growth will have to rely increasingly on the mainland economy. Empirical work shows that competition is important for promoting economic...

Following the deep recession in the early 1990s growth has been strong, but the scope for economic catch-up remains considerable and cross-country empirical evidence suggests that enhancing competition is an important means of achieving this. Structural reforms to strengthen competition in the...

This paper presents an analysis of the roles and performances of the major public enterprises (MPEs) from the energy, transportation, communication and construction sectors in Turkey between 2005 and 2013. The recent governmental policy towards the PEs presents differences based on sectors. The...

For-profit hospitals in California contract out to a much greater extent than either public hospitals or private nonprofit hospitals. To explain why, we build a model in which the outsourcing decision is a trade-off between net revenues and “quality", any factor of interest to the hospital...

Line of business restrictions (LOBRs) are antitrust remedies or regulatory restrictions that limit the activities that a firm can undertake. They include separation restrictions ranging from structural to behavioural separation (accounting, functional or legal). However, there are also...

Early economic research on natural monopoly regulation focused on market failure -- pricing tariffs and externalities. While Coase's multi-tariff marginal cost pricing became the standard, his approach to externality regulation as a contractual issue shifted the debate to transaction costs, but...

We examine how the U.S. Federal Government governs R&D contracts with private-sector firms. The government chooses between two contractual forms: grants and cooperative agreements. The latter provides the government substantially greater discretion over, and monitoring of, project progress....