The Economics of Harmonisation: Implications for Reform of Commercial Law and Regulation in New Zealand
This paper provides an economic assessment of the costs and benefits of harmonising New Zealand's commercial laws and regulations with those in Australia or with an OECD norm. It argues that unless the definition of harmonisation is limited to mutual recognition the economics literature surveyed does not support a general presumption in favour of harmonisation of commercial laws.The absence of any presumption in favour of harmonisation is based on the infeasibility of full harmonisation while New Zealand maintains political independence and on the overall requirement for an assessment of the efficiency of any law in the context of the New Zealand economy
Harmonisation of social regulation in the Australian Federation: a case study of occupational health and safety
This thesis examines the harmonisation of Australia’s occupational health and safety (OHS) laws and, through that examination, the intersection of three important contemporary public policy issues: harmonisation; social regulation; and federalism. Through this examination the thesis challenges the prevailing political zeitgeist of harmonisation as an overwhelmingly positive and economically rational reform. Instead, the thesis reveals that harmonisation reforms are complex, contested and, as with all areas of social regulation, involve difficult trade-offs between competing values and interests producing both winners and losers. The thesis begins by describing and conceptualising each of the key research frontiers: harmonisation; social regulation; and federalism. Each issue is found to be more complex than first appears, and capable of multiple meanings. The thesis develops a conceptual framework for each issue through which each can be better understood, and its use examined. The frameworks are then employed to examine the harmonisation of Australia’s OHS laws. The OHS policy arena provides a particularly interesting and challenging case study. It is an area characterised by strong competing interests and multiple stakeholder objectives where progress (viewed from both the employer and worker/union perspectives) has often been the product of hard fought battles. It also is an area with a rich harmonisation history, employing different modes of federalism and different harmonisation techniques. The thesis reveals that the decision to harmonise social regulation, properly understood, is a value judgement that involves the balancing of three broad sets of values: (1) economic efficiency; (2) broader societal values of equity, justice, fairness, etc; and (3) the democratic values underpinning a federal system of government. It also reveals that harmonisation initiatives involve balancing the interests of different actors, including between single-state and multi-state regulatees; between regulatees and the people whom the regulation is intended to benefit; and between regulatees and beneficiaries of different states. However, in the case of OHS these complexities and trade-offs were either not understood or positively avoided in the harmonisation policy development process. Broad promises were made that the reform was unable to fully deliver. This left some stakeholders dissatisfied and the harmonised regime vulnerable to the pressure these dissatisfied stakeholders could bring upon responsive state governments to deviate from the uniform model laws. Several reasons for this are identified. These include: the economic-centric nature of the policy debate that largely ignored the distributional effects of the reform; the ‘seductive’ nature of the harmonisation concept itself; the selection of harmonisation mechanisms ill-suited to delivering the reform’s policy objective; and the existence of two tiers of government involved in setting OHS policy which provides dissatisfied stakeholders with the opportunity to re-advocate their case before more responsive state politicians. The overall findings of this research project suggest that some reform of the processes and institutions of harmonisation policy making may be desirable, and a number of ideas to make harmonisation work better are offered. Such reforms it is suggested would enhance the efficacy, efficiency and legitimacy of the harmonisation process, and its outcomes.
Public Hospitals : Options for Reform through Public-Private Partnerships
Globally, health expenditures rose from an average of 3 percent of GDP in 1950 to 8 percent (US$3 trillion) in 1999 (WHO 2000). The increase in spending has been driven by rising income, changing demographic and epidemiological trends, and costly new pharmaceuticals and technology. Although technology is allowing a shift to outpatient care, hospitals still account for 30–50 percent of health expenditures. Public funding has not kept pace with the growth in spending. Much of the increase has been financed from private sources (out-ofpocket payments and private insurance), while the share funded publicly (by tax revenue and national insurance) declined by 6 percent between 1977 and 1997. Constraints on public funding, combined with rising costs, have forced public hospitals to cut costs wherever possible while still endeavoring to guarantee universal (and often free) access to public patients.1 Governments have used different strategies to address these problems, such as shifting financing from general tax revenue to payroll-financed national health insurance, narrowing the basic package of services available to all citizens, linking hospital funding to outputs and efficiency, amalgamating hospitals into networks, increasing autonomy and incentives for management, and reducing the number of hospital beds. Some governments have also turned to public-private partnerships to bring private sector efficiency into public hospitals.