Advanced Textbooks in Economics, Volume 23: Public Enterprise Economics: Theory and Application focuses on economics, mathematical economics, and econometrics, including microeconomics, marginal-cost pricing, taxes, and income effects. The manuscript takes a look at the essential parts of public sector pricing models, normative optimum theory, and normative piecemeal theory. Discussions focus on welfare improvements with non-tight constraints, welfare -improving increases of public inefficiency, conditions for optimal prices and quantities, compensating for income effects, and conditions for optimal quality. The book then ponders on marginal-cost pricing, Ramsey pricing, rate of return regulation, and pricing with distributional aims. Topics include comparing distributional and allocative pricing, prices versus taxes, optimum Ramsey policy, influence of Ramsey prices on allocation, distribution, and stabilization, and consequences for allocation, distribution, and stabilization. The publication examines bus and underground services in London, economic theory and empirical analysis, and different approaches towards optimal quality, including empirical studies on bus and underground demand, organizational and political history, and microeconomics of the representative consumer. The book is a valuable source of data for researchers interested in public enterprise economics.

'A brilliant critical and fresh look at the public choice school of thought.' - Paul Streeten This book challenges theories of public goods, public enterprise and public choice on three fronts. Government action reflects wider interests and commitments than just the material self-interest assumed as primary by the three theories. Government contributes to the productivity and quality of the modern mixed economy in ways not captured by theories stressing the inherent superiority of private markets. Lastly, old and new ideas within established traditions of political thought justify government action beyond the libertarian argument for limited government.

State-owned enterprises make up roughly 10 percent of the world economy, yet they are woefully understudied. This handbook offers the first synthesis of the topic since the 1980s and offers a comprehensive reference for a generation. The authors provide a detailed explanation of the theory that underpins the expansion of state-owned enterprises in the 21st century. Each chapter delivers an overview of current knowledge, as well as identifying issues and relevant debates for future research. The authors explain how state-owned enterprises are used in both developed and developing countries and offer an insight into complex and fascinating organizations such as the German municipal conglomerates or the multinational companies owned by states. New modes of governance and regulation have been invented to make sure they act in the public interest. This handbook brings together a wealth of international scholars, offering multiple theoretical perspectives to help shape a brave new world. It will be of interest to teachers and students of Economics, Public Administration and Business, academics, established researchers and PhD students seeking rigorous literature reviews on specific aspects of SOEs, as well as practitioners and decision makers in international organizations.

Hans-Werner Sinn, Munich, West Germany This book contains 15 papers presented at a conference in Neresheim, West Ger many, in June 1986. The articles were selected by anonymous referees and most of them have undergone substantial revisions since their presentation. The common topic is measurement of welfare, both from efficiency and from equity perspectives. For many economists, welfare is a diffuse, arbitrary and am biguous concept. The papers collected in this book show that this view is not justified. Though not beyond all doubt, welfare theory today is crisp and clear, offering fairly straightforward measuring concepts. It even comes up with numbers that measure society's advantage or disadvantage from specific policy options in monetary units. Politicians get something they can intuitively understand and argue with, and they do not have to be afraid that all this is metaphysics or the result of the scientist's personal value judgements. Some economists, whom I would classify as belonging to the "everything is optimal" school, would claim that providing politicians with numerical welfare measures is superfluous or even dangerous. The world is as it is, and any attempt to give policy advice can only make things worse. I do not share this view. There are good policies and there are bad ones, but it may not be easy to distinguish between them. There is a role for consulting politicians, Dr.

This clear, precisely written text presents an important branch of the modern, micro-economically based theory of industrial organization and of public finance, utilizing calculus only. Answers are provided to some pertinent economic questions, such as the pricing policies of vote-seeking politicians, of empire-building bureaucrats and of out-put-maximizing and energy-saving public utilities. These policies are compared with the welfare economic benchmark rules e.g. on marginal cost pricing and Ramsey pricing. Great significance is attached to price regulation. The book elucidates the recent replacement of rate of return regulation by price-cap regulation. It also explains why many simple rules like yardstick regulation fail to achieve optimal prices, which shows how complicated it is to induce managers to truthfully reveal their private information. How this can be achieved properly is shown in various principal-agent models on regulation with uncertain costs, uncertain demand and with soft budget constraints.

Modern Economic Theory is a critique on how monetary revolution across the globe is changing the course of world economies, financial systems and markets. Beginning with discussion on price theory and microeconomics, this classic textbook progresses to describe comprehensively, theory of income and employability or macroeconomics, money and banking, international economies and public finance. Economic systems, economics of development and planning and economies of welfare provide a clear idea about recent developments in and criticism of compensation principle, market structures and social welfare. It adequately meets the requirements of the BA and B.Com courses (Pass and Honours). In addition, postgraduate students of Arts and Commerce and aspirants of various competitive examinations will also find the book very useful and informative.

Through a study of French petroleum policy over the last fifty years, Harvey B. Feigenbaum presents a theoretical analysis of public enterprise and a general analysis of the relationship of state to society. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.