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AbstractMainstream health economics conceives health care as a commodity, at least metaphorically, and also attempts to quantify health, both of which, this article contends, lead to the objectification of the individual. Consequently, the standard approach distorts the nature of health care and does not furnish a sufficient basis for the promotion of human dignity; indeed, there is much to suggest it is a source of debilitation.

This paper identifies the nature of agency problems in professional football in the UK. Conflicting elements within director‐owners'objective functions combined with highly concentrated ownership rights are sources of agency problems, manifest by the poor financial performance of many clubs. Arguably, a club's supporters influence its output implying that supporters may be considered as an input.Given this, theory suggests that efficiency may be enhanced if supporters possess more property rights in their respective clubs.

Public ownership in the form of nationalization of the banking sector has re-emerged on the public agenda. Yet, there has been very little debate about the meaning, status, and function of public ownership as an alternative strategy in the context of globalization and advanced capitalism. Here, as a contribution to this agenda we advocate forms of public ownership tailored to enhance democratic decision making in the economy, to achieve greater equality and social cohesion, and wherever possible to encourage localized rather than central control and ownership. JEL classification: B51; H10; L00.

MBA Professional Report ; Acquisition research (Graduate School of Business & Public Policy) ; The Department of Defense is spending an ever-increasing amount on support for the operation of Continental United States (CONUS) installations. The purpose of this MBA project is to provide a comprehensive overview of how service acquisitions are managed for United States Navy installations. This project will discuss the process of gathering empirical data from a web-based survey created from a previous MBA project (Meinshausen & Compton, 2007) that will be distributed as a tasker from the Office of the Commander of Naval Operations. This survey was conducted between June and July 2008, and covered 87% of the installations found on the regional commands' websites. Also, this MBA project will compare the survey results with the concerns of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in the area of service acquisition management. The results of this research portrays that the majority of the contracts issued at Navy installations are competitive firm fixed price without incentives contract. The project team approach is used on half of the services contracts awarded for installation services. Additionally, personnel assigned to monitor installation service contracts are only minimal trained resulting in statements of work and statements of objectives not being generated at the requirements level. The results of this project will be used for further research in the area of improvements to installation service acquisitions. ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Abstract:Standard health economics concentrates on the provision of care by medical professionals. Yet 'care' receives scant analysis; it is portrayed as a spillover effect or externality in the form of interdependent utility functions. In this context care can only be conceived as either acts of altruism or as social capital. Both conceptions are subject to considerable problems stemming from mainstream health economics' reliance on a reductionist social model built around instrumental rationality and consequentialism. Subsequently, this implies a disregard for moral rules and duties and the compassionate aspects of behaviour. Care as an externality is a second-order concern relative to self-interested utility maximization, and is therefore crowded out by the parameters of the standard model. We outline an alternative relational approach to conceptualising care based on the social embeddedness of the individual that emphasises the ethical properties of care. The deontological dimension of care suggests that standard health economics is likely to undervalue the importance of care and caring in medicine.

This paper argues that charging for a merit good, such as water, raises important distributional concerns. More direct charging is likely to demonstrate a pronounced impact on poorer sections of society. Arguably, this carries potentially adverse allocative efficiency effects. Following Hochman and Rodgers' (1969) thesis that wealthier individuals may benefit from the redistribution of income to the poor; the regressive pricing of merit goods will engender external costs. We argue that this is likely in the context of domestic water provision in Scotland. On this basis we evaluate the comparative regressiveness of five alternative charging arrangements. Somewhat counter‐intuitively, our simulation results reveal that a flat rate licence fee may be marginally the least regressive of the five arrangements.