This Working Paper is a summary of a workshop which was held at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria in 1992. Small scale privatization (SSP) of shops, restaurants and other consumer services has been accomplished in the first stage of the complex...

"One of the new institutional forms of coping with the problem of rationing access to the commons involves the use of tradable permits. Applications of this approach have spread to many different types of resources and many different countries. The most common applications involve the control of...

Many quality dimensions are hard to contract upon and are at risk of degradation when services are procured rather than produced in-house. However, procurement may foster performance-improving innovation. We assemble a large data set on elderly care services in Sweden between 1990 and 2009,...

Non-contractible quality dimensions are at risk of degradation when the provision of public services is privatized. However, privatization may increase quality by fostering performance-improving innovation, particularly if combined with increased competition. We assemble a large data set on...

Many quality dimensions are hard to contract upon and are at risk of degradation when services are procured rather than produced in-house. However, procurement may foster performance-improving innovation. We assemble a large data set on elderly care services in Sweden between 1990 and 2009,...

Many quality dimensions are hard to contract upon and are at risk of degradation when the service is procured rather than produced in-house. On the other hand, procurement may foster performance-improving innovation. We assemble a large data set on elderly care services in Sweden for the...

International organizations promote privatization as precondition for economic development. But is there really too little privatization? This political economy model asks for the incentives of governments to privatize or restructure a state-owned firm. Different government types are compared to...

This paper investigates how politicians' patronage connections affect privatizations in China. The connections to top political leaders (i.e., Central Committee of the Communist Party of China) make local politicians engage more in rent-seeking by selling state-owned enterprises (SOEs) at...

We investigate whether competitive forces and privatization have yet began to play an efficiency-enhancing role in Russia. We also explore the economic effects of harder budget constraints on enterprise behavior. The empirical work is based on a large enterprise panel of Russian firms 1990-94,...

Russian higher education is in the process of reforming. Introduction of the standardized computer-graded test and educational vouchers was intended to increase accessibility of higher education, make its funding more effective, and reduce corruption in admissions to public colleges. The idea of...