New from OPI

You can find presentations and papers from OPI's January meeting on `institutions incentives & public sector performance' here.

You can follow the progress of our `regulation, motivation and the NHS reforms' study on a new webpage.

OPI is collaborating with the Cambodia Development Resource Institute in an Equitap study led by the Institute for Health Policy, Sri Lanka  to explore the way catastrophic healthcare costs are financed in Cambodia.

Private contributions to public sector performance

`Disclosure' only improves state or corporate behaviour if reputation is valued and on the line. Read Cecilia Perla's paper here.

Corruption comes in many forms and sizes and is hard to measure. However, responses might be more effective if they were better-tuned. Read Cecilia Perla's paper here.

A perceived lack of legitimacy may be a major deterrent to companies seeking to transfer systems and skills to the governments of countries where they operate. Cecilia Perla analyses the sources of corporate legitimacy and the conditions that favour it.  Read her paper here.

Other recent work

Martin Karlsson (Oxford Institute of Ageing) reviews the literature on the economics of public sector motivation  Read his paper here.

Matt Jowett (Regional WHO Office for Europe) asks if social capital has anything to do with the success of community health insurance. Read his paper here.

The way government performance is assessed increasingly determines flows of private investment and international aid. Matt Andrews (Harvard Kennedy School) argues that government performance needs to be judged in the context of a country's history, demography and economic development. Read his paper here.

Cristopher Ballinas Valdes (Hertford College, Oxford) proposes that public sector reforms need to adjust to indigenous institutions rather than trying to adjust them. Read his paper here.

The world of the future will be marked by big cities and important municipal governments. The way Whitehall has managed English local government performance has lessons beyond the UK, and even Europe.  Peter John (University of Manchester) suggests that the rigorous central controls of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment regime were needed to motivate improvements although they did not offer much compensation for deprived areas. Read his paper here. However, maintaining progress now depends on giving local authorities stronger incentives to innovate (Clive Grace & Steve Martin, Cardiff Business School). Read their paper here.

Barry Quirk, CE, London Borough of Lewisham says that `Organisations are cakes, not cars.' Look at his presentation here.  But its hard to get the incentive mix right. Fiona Murray explains why. Read her paper here.