Strategic behavior under partial cooperation

We investigate how a group of players might cooperate with each other within the setting of a non-cooperative game. We pursue two notions of partial cooperative equilibria that follow a modification of Nash's best response rationality rather than a core-like approach. Partial cooperative Nash equilibrium treats non-cooperative players and the coalition of cooperators symmetrically, while the notion of partial cooperative leadership equilibrium assumes that the group of cooperators has a first-mover advantage. We prove existence theorems for both types of equilibria. We look at three well-known applications under partial cooperation. In a game of voluntary provision of a public good we show that our two new equilibrium notions of partial cooperation coincide. In a modified Cournot oligopoly, we identify multiple equilibria of each type and show that a non-cooperator may have a higher payoff than a cooperator. In contrast, under partial cooperation in a symmetric Salop City game, a cooperator enjoys a higher return.

Does the UK Local Finance Improvement Trust (Lift) Initiative Improve Risk Management in Public-Private Procurement?

The UK government introduced the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and, latterly, the Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT) in an attempt to improve public service provision. As a variant of PFI, LIFT seeks to create a framework for the effective provision of primary care facilities. Like conventional PFI procurement, LIFT projects involve long-term contracts, complex multi-party interactions and thus create various risks to public sector clients. This paper investigates the advantages and disadvantages of LIFT with a focus on how this approach facilitates or impedes risk management from the public sector client perspective. Our paper concludes that LIFT has a potential for creating additional problems, including the further reduction of public sector control, conflicts of interest, the inappropriate use of enabling funds, and higher than market rental costs affecting the uptake of space in the buildings by local health care providers. However, there is also evidence that LIFT has facilitated new investment and that Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) have themselves started addressing some of the weaknesses of this procurement format through the bundling of projects and other forms of regional co-operation.

Multiple Public Goods and Lexicographic Preferences Replacement Principle.

We study the problem of locating two public goods for a group of agents with single-peaked preferences over an interval. An alternative specifies a location for each public good. In Miyagawa (1998), each agent consumes only his most preferred public good without rivalry. We extend preferences lexicographically and characterize the class of single-peaked preference rules by Pareto-optimality and replacement-domination. This result is considerably different from the corresponding characterization by Miyagawa (2001a).

L'exception de non-subrogation: l'influence de ses principes justificatifs sur sa mise en oeuvre

À la lecture de l'article 2365 c.c.Q., le créancier et la caution ne peuvent pas percevoir les droits et les libertés que ce texte concrétise à leur encontre ou à leur profit. Pour pallier ce problème, les auteurs et la jurisprudence ont alors laissé place à leur imagination afin de tenter de classifier cette disposition à l'intérieur d'institutions juridiques éprouvées, le tout en vue de démythifier le contenu de la règle de droit. Pour notre part, nous considérons que l'exception de non-subrogation est une notion originale en soi, qui trouve sa source à l'intérieur même de son institution. La thèse que nous soutenons est que l'exception de non-subrogation, mode de libération qui a pour mission de combattre le comportement opportuniste, cristallise l'obligation de bonne foi en imposant implicitement au créancier une obligation de bonne subrogation. Tout manquement du créancier à cette obligation a comme conséquence de rendre le droit de créance du créancier irrecevable à l'égard de la caution devant les tribunaux. Ce précepte éclaircit le contexte de l'article 2365 C.c.Q. et, par le fait même, il permet de délimiter le contour de son domaine et de préciser ses conditions d'application. L'exception de non-subrogation est un mécanisme juridique qui date de l'époque romaine. Elle est maintenant intégrée dans presque tous les systèmes juridiques du monde, tant en droit civil qu'en common law. Dans la législation québécoise, elle s'est cristallisée à l'article 2365 C.c.Q. Il s'agit d'une disposition d'ordre public qui ne peut être invoquée que par la caution. Son application dépend du cumul de quatre conditions: 1) le fait du créancier; 2) la perte d'un droit subrogatoire; 3) le préjudice de la caution; 4) le lien causal entre les trois derniers éléments. Lorsque ces quatre conditions sont remplies, la caution est libérée de son engagement dans la mesure du préjudice qu'elle subit.

Partial decentralization as a safeguard against favoritism

In this paper I investigate the optimal level of decentralization of tasks for the provision of a local public good. I enrich the well-known trade-off between internalization of spillovers (that favors centralization) and accountability (that favors decentralization) by considering that public goods are produced through multiple tasks. This adds an additional institutional setting, partial decentralization, to the classical choice between full decentralization and full centralization. The main results are that partial decentralization is optimal when both the variance of exogenous shocks to electorate’s utility is large and the electorate expects high performance from politicians. I also show that the optimal institutional setting depends on the degree of substitutability / complementarity between tasks. In particular, I show that a large degree of substitutability between tasks makes favoritism more likely, which increases the desirability of partial decentralization as a safeguard against favoritism.

Publicness of goods and violent conflict : evidence from Colombia

How the degree of publicness of goods affect violent conflict? Based on the theoretical model in Esteban and Ray (2001) we find that the effect of the degree of publicness depends on the group size. When the group is small (large), the degree of publicness increases (decreases) the likelihood of conflict. This opens an empirical question that we tackle using microdata from the Colombian conflict at the municipality level. We use three goods with different publicness degree to identify the sign of the effect of publicness on conflict. These goods are coca crops (private good), road density (public good subject to congestion) and average education quality (a purer public good). After dealing with endogeneity issues using an IV approach, we find that the degree of publicness reduces the likelihood of both paramilitary and guerrilla attacks. Moreover, coca production exacerbates conflict and the provision of both public goods mitigates conflict. These results are robust to size, geographical, and welfare controls. Policies that improve public goods provision will help to fight the onset of conflict.

Fragmentation or creative diversity? Options in the provision of land management advisory services

Rural land managers need access to sound advice and information to respond to pressures from environmental regulations, declining farm incomes, changing patterns in international trade and new institutional arrangements within the domestic food chain. Governments have cut back their provision of advisory services but need more than ever to influence land managers' decisions to achieve a growing array of policy objectives: The paper develops a conceptual framework for analysing advisory services and concludes, through a review of sixteen case studies, that the needs of both governments and land managers can be met by a diverse mixture of private and public sector provision. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Are the debates on water privatization missing the point? Experiences from Africa, Asia and Latin America

This paper has two principal aims: first, to unravel some of the arguments mobilized in the controversial privatization debate, and second, to review the scale and nature of private sector provision of water and sanitation in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Despite being vigorously promoted in the policy arena and having been implemented in several countries in the South in the 1990s, privatization has achieved neither the scale nor benefits anticipated. In particular, the paper is pessimistic about the role that privatization can play in achieving the Millennium Development Goals of halving the number of people without access to water and sanitation by 2015. This is not because of some inherent contradiction between private profits and the public good, but because neither publicly nor privately operated utilities are well suited to serving the majority of low-income households with inadequate water and sanitation, and because many of the barriers to service provision in poor settlements can persist whether water and sanitation utilities are publicly or privately operated. This is not to say that well-governed localities should not choose to involve private companies in water and sanitation provision, but it does imply that there is no justification for international agencies and agreements to actively promote greater private sector participation on the grounds that it can significantly reduce deficiencies in water and sanitation services in the South.

Ideological dominance in recreation provision: towards a theory of Local Authority response to Compulsory Competitive Tendering in Britain

This paper considers how the delivery of public leisure services in Britain has been affected by the imposition of Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) on the management of facilities. In particular, it focuses on the changing relationship between the central and local levels of government, theorising a tripartite local response to CCT, incorporating local statism, post-Fordist rejection of CCT and post- Fordist compliance with the aims of the central administration. The paper then discusses the actual implementation of CCT, relating the theorised responses to those witnessed in practice. This results in the delineation of a continuum of stances, ranging from pragmatic forms of local statism, such as the protection of the former direct labour force, to centrist attempts to combine the ethics of socialism with the mechanics of the market, to an outright rejection of state organisation and control. The paper concludes that although legitimate attempts have been made to protect local services, the outcome of the CCT process has undoubtedly been the regeneration of public leisure provision away from its service roots towards a market model of provision.

Roman public libraries

This thesis aims to investigate the development and functions of public libraries in Rome and the Roman world. After a preface with maps of libraries in Rome, Section I discusses the precursors for public library provision in the private book collections of Republican Rome, and their transfer into the public domain with the first public libraries of Asinius Pollio and Augustus. Section II contains three 'case studies' of public libraries' different roles. The Augustan library programme is used in Ch.II.l to examine the role of imperial public libraries in literary life and the connections between Rome's libraries and those of Alexandria. Chapter II.2 concentrates on the libraries of Trajan's Forum to explore the intersection of imperial public libraries and monumental public architecture. This chapter responds to an important recent article by arguing for the continued identification of the Forum's libraries with twin brick buildings at its northern end, and suggests a series of correspondences between these libraries and its other monumental components. The conclusions of this chapter are important when considering the public libraries of the wider empire, several of which seem to have been inspired by the Trajanic libraries. Chapter II.3 considers imperial public libraries and leisure by looking at the evidence for libraries within bath-house complexes, concluding that their presence there is consistent with the archaeological and epigraphic evidence and fits in well with what we know of the intellectual and cultural life of these structures. Section III examines various aspects of the practical function of Roman public libraries: their contents (books and archives), division into Latin and Greek sections, provisions for shelving and cataloguing, staff, usership, architectural form, decoration, and housing of works of art. The picture that emerges is of carefully designed and functional buildings intended to sustain public, monumental, and practical functions. Section IV uses a variety of texts to examine the way in which libraries were viewed and used. Ch. IV. 1 discusses the evidence for use of libraries by scholars and authors such as Gellius, Galen, Josephus, and Apuleius. Ch. IV.2 examines parallels between library collections and compendious encyclopaedic elements within Roman literature and considers how library collections came to be canon-forming institutions and vehicles for the expression of imperial approval or disapproval towards authors. The channels through which this imperial influence flowed are investigated in Ch. IV.3, which looks at the directors and staff of the public libraries of Rome. The final section (V) of the thesis concerns public libraries outside the city of Rome. Provincial libraries provide a useful case study in 'Romanisation': they reveal a range of influences and are shown to embody local, personal, and metropolitan imperial identities. There follows a brief conclusion, and a bibliography. There are also five appendices of numismatic and epigraphic material discussed in the text. This material has not been adequately or completely gathered elsewhere and is intended to assist the reader; where appropriate it includes illustrations, transcriptions, and translations.

Some insights on religion from public goods economics

This paper provides a theoretical discussion on what analytical insight is gained by viewing religion as both a pure and impure public good. It suggests that organized religion converts a public good into an excludable club good and can be viewed as providing both an access regime for this club good as well as acting as an intermediary. Interestingly, this drives a wedge between the ardent and moderate adherents of a religion. It also presents an analysis of trust in social relationships when organized religion works to provide a credible signal of trustworthiness.

Welfare and fiscal policy with public goods and infrastructure

We construct and simulate a model to study the welfare and macroeconomic impact of government actions when its productive role is taken into account. The trade-off between public investment and public consumption is also investigated, since public consumption is introduced as a public good that directly affects individuals' well-being. Our results replicate econometric evidence showing that part of the observed slowdown of U.S. productivity growth can be explained by the reduction of investment in infrastructure which also implied a sizable welfare 1085 to the popu1ation. Depending on the methodology used we found a welfare cost ranging from 4.2% to 1.16% of GNP. The impact of fiscal policy can be qualitative and quantitative distinct depending on Whether we assume a higher or smaller output elasticity to infrastructure. If it is high enough, increases in tax rates may stimulate accumulation and production, which is the opposite prediction of standard ncocJassica1 models.

Taxing hard-to-tax markets

Tax enforcement costs constrain the government s ability to observe economic transactions, giving rise to hard-to-tax (HTT) markets. In these markets transactions are untaxed and consumers are better o¤ than in taxed markets. This paper studies a novel approach to combat evasion in HTT markets: consumer auditing, which rewards consumers for re- questing transaction receipts. We develop a Hotelling-type spatial model of sales taxation to analyze the welfare and distributional e¤ects of the implementation of this policy. We and that consumer auditing allows for a lower tax rate and greater provision of the public good in the economy. We show that this policy not only can enhance welfare, but also equalize utilities of consumers across markets

Military expenditure and development in Latin America

Includes bibliography

Social vulnerability, insurance and risk diversification in Latin America and the Caribbean

Includes bibliography