Telecommunications privatization, competition, liberalization, and regulatory independence in several countries have been embarked with the goals of maximizing universal access to telecommunications services as a developmental goal, promoting efficiency through competition and establishment of world class telecommunications networks. Using interview data from India and China –the two countrie...

Although the link between improved infrastructure services and economic growth is uncertain, it is clear that reforms aimed at creating competition and regulating natural monopolies establish an environment conducive to private sector participation, incentives for companies to strive for efficiency savings that can ultimately be passed on to consumers, and greater provision of services (such as...

In keeping with the neo-liberal emphasis on privatization, international aid has been increasingly channeled through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their expatriate technical experts to support primary health care (PHC) in the developing world. Relationships between international aid workers and their local counterparts have thus become critical aspects of PHC and its effectiveness. ...

EVERYONE knows that a population bulge, the post– World War II baby boom generation, will be reaching retirement age beginning around 2010. Already, this aging of the population is being reflected in the debate over “saving social security.” Various proposals for fixing social security have been offered, ranging from modest payroll tax increases and benefit cuts to investments in the stock mark...

During the 1990s employment relations systems in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) experienced a complex, multilevel process of transformation. In this article, we discuss the transformation of employment relations systems under the impact of privatization, foreign direct investment, and pressures for the accession to the European Union enlargement at the enterprise, industry-, and national leve...

During the late 70's and early 80's in Mexico, as in the rest of Latin-America, sanitary policies were directed to support the growth of the private sector of health care at the expense of the public sector. This work analyzes the evolution of the health insurance market as a part of the privatization process of health care. The analysis based on economic data, provides the political profile be...

The trend in the district heating industry is toward increased privatization and openness to competition, which bring with them other phenomena associated with civil law, such as bankruptcies. Vingåker was one of six Swedish municipalities whose district heating companies went bankrupt in 2004. The bankruptcy caused major disruptions in Vingåker, not least as a result of the unregulated legal f...

In 1986 the British government deregulated the majority of the local bus industry, cut the amount of a subsidy, and privatized many public bus companies. Unit costs have declined significantly, cross-subsidies have been reduced, and there has been innovation in operating practices. However, mergers have increased concentration, and demand has declined due to the turmoil of service changes and t...

The Doctor-Patient Relationship (DPR) is a complex concept in the medical sociology in which patients voluntarily approach a doctor and thus become a part of a contract in which they tends to abide with the doctor's guidance. Globally, the DPR has changed drastically over the years owing to the commercialization and privatization of the health sector. Furthermore, the dynamics of the DPR has sh...

This paper implements both stochastic production and cost frontier analyses to estimate the efficiency of toll motorway companies in Spain, the country with the largest number of private concessionaires in this economic sector. Our dataset includes 32 concessionaires with different features for a time span of 26 years (1988-2014). The results support the existence of scale and density economies...