In business-to-business relations, contracts serve both as a protection mechanism of trading parties, as well as a prescription document for activities to be executed by them. The processes of contract establishment and its enactment are often expensive and time-consuming. E-contracting aims at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the contracting process. Additionally, it offers new op...

We examine the effects of private sector contracting on public employment using panel data from the Census of Governments and International City/County Management Association surveys conducted in 1997 and 2002. We model decisions about contracting and the size of the public workforce as jointly-dependent decisions affecting both full-time and part-time employment. Our results from a seemingly u...

Low population density in rural developing countries coupled with deficient infrastructure, weak state capacity and limited budgets makes increasing health care coverage difficult. Contracting-out mobile medical teams may be a helpful solution in this context. This article examines the impact of a large-scale programme of this type in Guatemala. We document large impacts on immunisation rates f...

OBJECTIVES This study examines the factors that influence make or buy decisions corresponding to four generic services (housekeeping, laundry, food services, and maintenance and security) in Spanish hospitals (3,160 transactions in 790 hospitals). METHODS The empirical estimation of a logistic model based on hospital utility maximization is presented. Factors included in the model are not onl...