The economic literature on PPPs has generally overlooked agency problems within private consortia. We provide a first contribution in this direction, relying on a simple incomplete contracts framework where a Builder and an Operator set up a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to carry out a contract with the government. Because of incomplete contracts, the bundling of tasks is imperfect, and the SPV...

This paper analyzes the effects of hospital ownership on three specific strategies to improve financial performance. These strategies include (1) spending on advertising to increase revenues through increased market share and premium prices; (2) spending on accounting systems to cut costs, increase accounts receivable collections, or increase legitimacy with stakeholders and donors; and (3) imp...

People who feed cats that they do not perceive they own (sometimes called semi-owners) are thought to make a considerable contribution to unwanted cat numbers because the cats they support are generally not sterilized. Understanding people's perception of cat ownership and the psychology underlying cat semi-ownership could inform approaches to mitigate the negative effects of cat semi-ownership...

Education Vouchers: The Right to Choose or to Own? M. H. Hassani Shalmaani, Ph.D. Using education vouchers is one way of increasing parental access to schools and hence, creating rightful choices for them in regard to schools. Since such rights require governmental cooperation, it is necessary to delineate the boundaries of parental rights in order to clarify if the parents have s...

The recent strategy of the Government of China has been to attract foreign direct investment in order to obtain foreign technology and capital. There is an official preference for advanced technology, and for its rapid diffusion to domestic firms. This approach underpins the joint-venture legislation applicable to most parts of the manufacturing sector. Using four case studies of foreign affili...

In recent years, vehicle theft has become an increasing problem worldwide. A staggering number of cars are stolen every year, and up to half of these are never recovered. Thus, vehicle ownership identification is an important security issue. In this paper, based on the triple-trapdoor chameleon hash function and the concept of the hash-sign-switch paradigm, we propose the vehicle ownership iden...

This paper provides evidence on the value of the vote hypothesis with stock price analysis around liberalization of foreign ownership restrictions in the private Indian banks. In May 2005, the Indian government removed the cap of 10 percent ownership by foreign banks, which had made takeover of Indian banks impossible for foreign banks. We hypothesize that removal of the voting cap would increa...

For many libertarians, the thesis of self-ownership is the foundation of their political philosophy. Natural rights to life, liberty, and propertyÑthe protection of which is, according to the libertarian, governmentÕs sole legitimate functionÑderive from self-ownership, in particular oneÕs ownership of his body and its parts, of his capacities and labor, and, by extension, of whatever he can ac...

Hospitals operate in markets with varied demographic, competitive, and ownership characteristics, yet research on ownership tends to examine hospitals in isolation. Here we examine three hospital ownership types -- nonprofit, for-profit, and government -- and their spillover effects. We estimate the effects of for-profit market share in two ways, on the provision of medical services and on oper...