Recent reforms of the National Health Service have focused attention on contracts for health services and competition amongst the providers of those services as means of ensuring that quality is maintained at an acceptable standard whilst costs are contained. This paper considers the particular...

The predictions of job-search theory for an analysis of unemployment have long been of interest (e.g. see Lippman and McCall (1976 b), Barron (1975) and Feinberg (1977)). In particular an important question is with regard to the duration of search unemployment and its determinants. Unfortunately...

This paper extends the analysis of wage determination in a search environment to the case where firms employ numerous individuals and benefit from team production. It is shown that monopsony wage offers may display perverse comparative statics properties. Interesting problems then arise...

Dental service providers in the British National Health Service (NHS) operate under a number of remuneration arrangements that give rise to different incentives. Using data derived from the Scottish dental system, we examine the relationships between remuneration, patient exemption status and...

This article examines the profitability of horizontal merger in an open economy with Cournot competition. We find that duopoly is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for domestic merger to be profitable. A cross-border merger, however, can be profitable from any market structure.

Following major reforms of the British National Health Service (NHS) in 1990, the roles of purchasing and providing health services were separated, with the relationship between purchasers and providers governed by contracts. Using a mixed multinomial logit analysis, we show how this policy...