Written in light of recent advances in the field, this book is an up-to-date account of economic aspects of the energy markets. The editors fully consider the implications for regulation, privatization, and international competition in each of the major markets--electricity, gas, coal, and oil.

How did BMW recover from the verge of bankruptcy to become one of the Europe's strongest companies? Why did Saatchi and Saatchi's global strategy bring the company to its knees? Why has Philips outstanding record in innovation not been translated into success in the market? What can be learned from the marriage contract about the conduct of commercial negotiations? These are some of the questions addressed as John Kay asks What makes a business successful?

Medicine and business management share certain similarities, writes John Kay. For centuries, the theories behind medical practice were mostly nonsense. Doctors simply applied fashionable nostrums, bleeding one patient, starving another, and sometimes the patient got better, sometimes not. The prestige of a doctor rested more on the social rank of his patients and the confidence of his assertions than on the evidence of his cures. Much the same can be said of present-day management gurus. But there is one difference between medicine and management, Kay adds. In the last 100 years, medicine has...

The last decade has witnessed the introduction of an elaborate system of regulation in the UK. Whole segments of British industry are now operating under the supervision of regulatory bodies similar to the government departments they were designed to replace. Regulation has been an inevitable part of the structural changes in the 1980s, notably the privatization program and changes in the financial services industries. This book assesses these developments across a number of sectors (utilities, telecommunications, financial services, health, and higher education) and offers a range of...

This collection looks at one of the most enduring legacies of the 1980s in Britain--the program of privitizations that the Thatcher government set moving in the first half of the decade, in which whole sectors of the UK economy which were formerly part of the public sector were sold off to the private sector. These programs have influenced economic policy throughout the world, most recently in Eastern Europe. The contributors here examine and evaluate what has been learned from the programs now completed, and what remains to be done.

Growing trade in Europe--accelerated by the "Single Market" program--has seen a sharp increase in international mergers between European-based firms. This increase in European mergers will almost certainly continue, raising important questions for industrial policymakers and business strategies. This book addresses these questions, bringing together a number of leading economists and authoritative commentators on mergers and merger policy.