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Contemporary Microeconomic Foundations for the Structure and Management of the Public Sector

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Abstract

The new public management of the 1980s was based in part on a range of important new insights about the role of transaction and agency costs arising from contractual incompleteness in defining the boundaries of the firm and the governance relationships within it. In this paper, we consider the literature of the last 25 years which extends our understanding of allocations of ownership rights and the boundaries of the firm as responses to contractual incompleteness. From this perspective, ownership represents an allocation of control rights to those with the potential to make the most important (value-enhancing) relationship-specific investments. We provide an outline of this modern approach to contractual incompleteness, illustrate its application to a range of issues in public and private ownership, investment, governance and decision-making, and provide suggestions about the impact that this approach might have on the scope, structure and management of the public sector in the 21st century.

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  • Lewis Evans & Graeme Guthrie & Neil Quigley, 2012. "Contemporary Microeconomic Foundations for the Structure and Management of the Public Sector," Treasury Working Paper Series 12/01, New Zealand Treasury.
    • Handle: RePEc:nzt:nztwps:12/01
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    File URL: https://treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2012-05/twp12-01.pdf
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    Cited by:

    1. Sebastian J. Goerg & Sebastian Kube & Ro'i Zultan, 2010. "Treating Equals Unequally: Incentives in Teams, Workers' Motivation, and Production Technology," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(4), pages 747-772, October.
    2. Lewis Evans & Neil Quigley, 2013. "Intergenerational Contracts and Time Consistency: Implications for Policy Settings and Governance in the Social Welfare System," Treasury Working Paper Series 13/25, New Zealand Treasury.
    3. Lavrutich, Maria & Hagspiel, Verena & Siddiqui, Afzal S., 2023. "Transmission investment under uncertainty: Reconciling private and public incentives," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(3), pages 1167-1188.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Incomplete contracts; investment decision-making; public ownership; management and governance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H40 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - General
    • L20 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - General
    • L33 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Comparison of Public and Private Enterprise and Nonprofit Institutions; Privatization; Contracting Out
    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies

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