Tag: Politics

Enron's swift slide to bankruptcy poses important questions on the regulation of electricity markets

It sat for 340 days, heard evidence from 195 witnesses and received over 4000 letters of objection. The public inquiry into Sizewell B was the second biggest ever - but it came to the wrong conclusion.

Lessons can be learnt from Railtrack’s failure. The government should re-appraise how projects should be financed and managed in the future.

Some economists argue that establishing clear property rights to resources is a key to economic success. But the Indonesian state’s attempt to reform ownership of the country’s forests has led to environmental catastrophe.

We are told that corporations are becoming ever more powerful; a match even for national economies. Before getting too concerned it is worth considering the nature of this authority.

Dominant companies may confer marginal benefits to consumers that are difficult, if not impossible, to estimate. However, antitrust authorities will do little wrong if they stick to the underlying principles of competition policy.

Whilst both the government and the market plays ever closer attention to the dismal performance of Railtrack it is worth asking why a separate track authority was needed in the first place. Given that the financial case is so compelling, how might Railtrack now be renationalised so as to achieve autonomy with real accountability?

Managers are unavoidably charged to balance the benefit of innovation with the risks of new processes, and to do this well. But the disastrous effects of asbestos manufacture and BSE indicate that markets and regulation are not helping.

Since the early days of privatisation, there has been an evident need for a framework which gave operational autonomy and managerial responsibility in public services but which was not the framework of the plc. But there is merit in pluralism here too.

It is the state of economy that decides elections: Or so the theory goes. The evidence, however, suggests that voters do pay far greater attention to the issues and politicians really do mean what they say.