This volume explores all aspects of contemporary public procurement theory, examining managing risk in procurement, collusion in procurement, efficiency in procurement, transparency in procurement, and auction design.

In the post-war period, spending on social security, health and education has grown continuously in the leading industrialized countries. The considerable size of this spending as a percentage of GDP together with the ageing population raise doubts on the sustainability of welfare spending. These doubts have been accompanied in recent years by an increasing awareness of the allocational inefficiencies and the distributive inequalities caused by the provision of some social services. The welfare state should therefore be reconstructed not only through readjustment of the social security system...

In the last twenty years, Italy has undergone significant changes in the functioning of the labour market and industrial relations. This makes it an excellent case study for evaluating labour market practices and possibilities for reform. Studies in Labour Markets and Industrial Relations brings together leading Italian and European scholars to trace the evolution of labour bargaining and industrial relations from both a theoretical and empirical perspective.

Antitrust, Regulation and Competition brings together a group of well-known European and American academics to examine antitrust policies and competitive behaviour on a wide variety of topical cases and critical markets. Taking both a theoretical and applied perspective, the contributors examine issues such as entry and market concentration, auctions, technological innovation, privatization and the role of public firms, market transparency, the supply of product quality and multinational firms.

The book collects ten papers which give a broad overview of the most recent economic studies in the fields of lobbying and special interest groups. This field of research has been attracting a growing interest in economic literature. The papers in this volume are both theoretical and empirical and throw new light on the role of organized interest groups in a large range of political issues including electoral competition, public debt taxation, trade policy, social security, environmental polices and public spending.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis on the design of institutions for the new Europe. Addressing critical issues such as the appropriate distribution of political powers, the next step in the constitution process, allocation of taxing powers and distribution of policy-making responsibilities.

This volume studies the various aspects of the ICT revolution, with an analysis of firm-level determinants of productive efficiency and growth and the effects of internationalization and the completion of the European market.

The interplay between firms' internal organization and market behaviour is a long standing issue in industrial economics. This book examines firms' objectives in the comparatively new perspective shaped by globalization. The positive and normative aspects of theoretical analysis are developed and richly complemented by empirical studies.

The US twin deficit, Western European economic integration, Eastern Europe's transition towards a market economy, the debt burden of the Less Developed Countries, the growing and deepening discrimination against the rest of the world by new homogeneous areas such as the North America free trade area, the new Europe, and Japan are the issues at the heart of global disequilibrium in the world economy. This book brings together leading economists to analyse these issues and further the debate on the need for sound economic policies to avoid a crash on a global scale.