EconTalk this week

There is only one country in the world where a person can sell a kidney to another citizen who buys it. That country is Iran. Tina Rosenberg of The New York Times talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the Iranian kidney market--how it works, its strengths and weaknesses, and whether its lessons apply to the United States or elsewhere.

There is a direct link to the audio available here.

Questions on trade

Tyler Cowen – for his upcoming conversation at the Mercatus Center with Dani Rodrik – asked on his blog for suggestions of questions that he might put to Professor Rodrik. Don Boudreaux suggested that Tyler ask Professor Rodrik the following question:

Rodrik was quoted in a 2007 New York Times report as saying that, while he follows the methods of modern economics, he rejects the “faith” [his word] – that says, among other things, that free trade is always good. And, of course, Rodrik is known for his ‘heterodox’ refusal to join in mainstream economists’ embrace of free trade.

So, ask Rodrik if economists who embrace free trade within a country are guilty of faith-based policy recommendations in the same way that he thinks economists who embrace free trade between countries are guilty of faith-based policy recommendations? If he answers no, ask him to summarize the relevant differences that separate intranational from international trade, and press him explain why these differences are real or strong enough to shift the burden of persuasion away from those who oppose a general policy of free trade and onto supporters of free trade.

Rodrik's answer to this question is given here. While Boudreaux's response to this answer is here.

A discussion well worth following.

EconTalk last week

Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes at a Broadway show? This week's EconTalk lifts the curtain on the magical world of Broadway: Mitch Weiss, co-author of The Business of Broadway, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his book and what it's like to manage the production of a blockbuster musical in New York City. Topics discussed include the eight-performance-per-week grind, the how and why of creating a Broadway set, the challenges of wardrobes (domestic and international) and the pluses and minuses of unions which are a central part of the Broadway workplace.

A direct link to the audio is available here.

Conversation on free banking theory between Larry White and Juan Ramón Rallo

Lawrence H. White is economics professor at George Mason University and Juan Ramón Rallo is also economist and director of Instituto Juan de Mariana.

EconTalk for two weeks

How much care do you take when you make a donation to a charity? What careers make the biggest difference when it comes to helping others? William MacAskill of Oxford University and the author of Doing Good Better talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the book and the idea of effective altruism. MacAskill urges donors to spend their money more effectively and argues that the impact on human well-being can be immense. MacAskill wants donors to rely on scientific assessments of effectiveness. Roberts pushes back on the reliability of such assessments. Other topics include sweatshops, choosing a career to have the biggest impact on others, and the interaction between private philanthropy and political action.

A direct link to the audio is available here.

Are human beings naturally cooperative or selfish? Can people thrive without government law? Paul Robinson of the University of Pennsylvania and author of Pirates, Prisoners and Lepers talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts the ideas in his book. Robinson argues that without government sanctions or legislation, there is an evolutionary drive to cooperate even in life-and-death situations. In such situations private punishment and norms play a crucial role in sustaining cooperative solutions. The last part of the conversation deals with the criminal justice system and how attitudes toward the system affect society-wide cooperation and crime.

A direct link to the audio is available here.

School vouchers: a survey of the economics literature

For those interested in the area there is a new NBER working paper out on School Vouchers: A Survey of the Economics Literature by Dennis Epple, Richard E. Romano and Miguel Urquiola.

Abstract:

We review the theoretical, computational, and empirical research on school vouchers, with a focus on the latter. In this substantial body of work, many studies find insignificant effects of vouchers on educational outcomes; however, multiple positive findings support continued exploration. Specifically, the empirical research on small scale programs does not suggest that awarding students a voucher is a systematically reliable way to improve educational outcomes. Nevertheless, in some settings, or for some subgroups or outcomes, vouchers can have a substantial positive effect on those who use them. Studies of large scale voucher programs find student sorting as a result of their implementation, although of varying magnitude. Evidence on both small scale and large scale programs suggests that competition induced by vouchers leads public schools to improve. Moreover, research is making progress on understanding how vouchers may be designed to limit adverse effects from sorting while preserving positive effects related to competition. Finally, our sense is that work originating in a single case (e.g., a given country) or in a single research approach (e.g., experimental designs) will not provide a full understanding of voucher effects; fairly wide ranging empirical and theoretical work will be necessary to make progress.

EconTalk this week

Thousands of bears in New Jersey. Humpback whales near New York City. Acres devoted to farming stable or declining even as food production soars. Jesse Ausubel of the Rockefeller University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the return of nature. Ausubel shows how technology has reduced many of the dimensions of the human footprint even as population rises and why this trend is likely to continue into the future. The conversation concludes with Ausubel's cautious optimism about the impact of climate change.

A direct link to the audio is available here.

Chris Trotter misunderstands economics

Over at the Offsetting Behaviour blog Eric Crampton notes that Chris Trotter has been writing In praise of Bryce Wilkinson. And justly so.

But at one point Trotter writes,

Economics II was staffed by young economists who had studied at universities in the United States where the monetarist theories of Milton Friedman, and the ideas of neo-classical economics generally, were already well-entrenched.

"[T]he ideas of neo-classical economics generally, were already well-entrenched". Is this in anyway surprising? This comment seems to show a rather large misunderstanding of the development of economics.

I mean neo-classical economics developed in the 1870s with the work of Carl Menger, William Stanley Jevons and Léon Walras. So by the 1970s and 1980s it had been around for 100 years. It had been the standard in economics textbooks since, at least, Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics in 1890s. So I am confused as to why Trotter thinks its worth noting that Treasury economists were trained in it. Every economics student, then as now, is trained in it. Its the standard, there is nothing unusual or noteworthy about it.

What would be worthy of note is if they were using non neo-classical ideas. And it is, because they were. Many of the ideas introduced by treasury economists of this time where ideas which moved thinking outside of the purely neo-classical box. They were thinking Coaseian thoughts by applying ideas from the law and economics literature and the new institutional economics to the New Zealand policy scene. They also utilised ideas from contract theory, in the main principal-agent theory, and the transaction cost economies of Oliver Williamson,

This kind of thinking is non neo-classical thinking. It moves away from the ideas of perfect markets, perfect information, zero transaction costs and institution free worlds. So one of the most important things we should be grateful to Wilkinson et al for is the introduction of non neo-classical thinking into New Zealand policy making. It is a great and lasting contribution, a contribution for which they can be justly praised.

Hal Varian interviews Alvin Roth

Hal Varian interviews Alvin Roth about Roth's new book "Who Gets What — and Why," at Google.

EconTalk this week

Rachel Laudan, visiting scholar at the University of Texas and author of Cuisine and Empire, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the history of food. Topics covered include the importance of grain, the spread of various styles of cooking, why French cooking has elite status, and the reach of McDonald's. The conversation concludes with a discussion of the appeal of local food and other recent food passions.

A direct link to the audio is available here.

EconTalk this week

Summer Brennan, author of The Oyster War, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about her book and the fight between the Drakes Bay Oyster Company and the federal government over farming oysters in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Along the way they discuss the economics of oyster farming, the nature of wilderness, and the challenge of land use in national parks and seashores.

A direct link to the audio is available here.

The "anti-commons" in intellectual policy

A common argument made with respect to intellectual property is that many countries innovation system provide excessively strong or numerous intellectual property rights that drown innovation in a “thicket” or “anti-commons” of overlapping legal rights. The majority view holds that anti-commons effects are a common occurrence that raises significant policy concerns about excessive intellectual property rights. A counter view to this line of argument is that market players have incentives and capacities to correct for anti-commons type effects through contract and other mechanisms.

In a paper, The Anti-Commons Revisited, forthcoming in the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, Jonathan Barnett aggregates and critically reviews the diverse body of evidence on this issue. He independently replicates some of the most controversial results, surveying over a century’s worth of pooling arrangements, and providing additional evidence on potential anti-commons effects in certain markets. Two surprising and unusually consistent conclusions emerge. First, there is little concrete evidence that intensive levels of intellectual property acquisition and enforcement restrain innovation or output. Second, unless constrained by antitrust limitations, markets consistently exhibit capacities to devise transactional solutions that preempt or mitigate intellectual thickets. These conclusions erode confidence in the majority view, which in turn casts doubt on normative recommendations in favour of weakening intellectual property rights to preclude anti-commons effects.

The abstract reads:

Intellectual property scholars and policymakers often assert that technology and creative markets suffer from “anti-commons” (“AC”) effects that restrain innovation within a web of conflicting intellectual property claims. A minority view asserts that market players have incentives and capacities to correct for AC effects through transactional solutions. To assess the relative merits of each side of this debate, I review a large and diverse body of empirical evidence relating to AC effects in contemporary and historical markets. I independently replicate the most controversial empirical findings, supplement additional research on selected markets, and provide a survey of all documented IP-pooling arrangements in U.S. markets since 1900. The weight of the evidence strongly favors the minority view. Evidence for AC effects is scarce while evidence that markets correct for AC effects is abundant. AC effects are typically preempted or mitigated through cooperative arrangements among small numbers of IP holders or transactional solutions devised by entrepreneurial intermediaries for large numbers of IP holders. This pattern recurs over a diverse array of markets and periods, including automobiles, petroleum refining, aircraft, and radio communications in the early to mid-20th century, and information and communications technology markets from the late 20th century through the present. Contrary to standard assumptions, there is little evidence that these markets experienced reduced or delayed innovation or output despite intensive levels of patent issuance and litigation.

EconTalk this week

Seafood is highly perishable and supply is often uncertain. Roger Berkowitz, CEO of Legal Sea Foods talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the challenges of running 34 seafood restaurants up and down the east coast. Berkowitz draws on his 22 year tenure as CEO and discusses how his business works day-to-day and the question of sustainability.

A direct link to thee audio is available here.

You REALLY know your economy is in trouble when .......

you start to run out of beer!!

From Vice News comes the news that Venezuela Faces Looming Beer Shortage in Dispute with Nation’s Biggest Brewer.

Venezuela's largest food distributor on Thursday denounced the government occupation of a Caracas warehouse amid accusations that the company is hoarding goods.

Soldiers took over the warehouse complex used by Empresas Polar late Wednesday just as Venezuela's federation of brewers announced that Polar's beer manufacturing subsidiary is shutting two of its six plants because of a lack of imported barley — a crucial ingredient in beer.

and

Earlier this month, the head of Venezuela liquor store federation warned that the nation was about to run out of beer because brewers had reached "zero hour" amid widespread shortages in raw materials. Days later, he was detained for reasons that remain unclear.

An economy without beer is an economy in need of reform, big time!

The history and future of workplace automation

There is much written about the effects that automation and robots will have on human employment and normally we are told it's all bad. The Luddites are still with us.

In a new article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives David H. Autor considers the effects on automation on jobs and asks Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation. The abstract reads:

In this essay, I begin by identifying the reasons that automation has not wiped out a majority of jobs over the decades and centuries. Automation does indeed substitute for labor—as it is typically intended to do. However, automation also complements labor, raises output in ways that leads to higher demand for labor, and interacts with adjustments in labor supply. Journalists and even expert commentators tend to overstate the extent of machine substitution for human labor and ignore the strong complementarities between automation and labor that increase productivity, raise earnings, and augment demand for labor. Changes in technology do alter the types of jobs available and what those jobs pay. In the last few decades, one noticeable change has been a "polarization" of the labor market, in which wage gains went disproportionately to those at the top and at the bottom of the income and skill distribution, not to those in the middle; however, I also argue, this polarization and is unlikely to continue very far into future. The final section of this paper reflects on how recent and future advances in artificial intelligence and robotics should shape our thinking about the likely trajectory of occupational change and employment growth. I argue that the interplay between machine and human comparative advantage allows computers to substitute for workers in performing routine, codifiable tasks while amplifying the comparative advantage of workers in supplying problem-solving skills, adaptability, and creativity.

So machines are both a substitute and a complement to labour, and when thinking about the effects of automation on employment we need to keep both these factors in mind. Machines have not, so far, replaced all workers, in fact employment is growing, and it's unlikely that they will replace all jobs in the future. The complementarities between labour and machines are stronger than many people seem to realise.

Are NZ First really as xenophobic and economically illiterate as this makes them sound?

An article at Voxy.co.nz tells us that English concedes NZ farms better off in NZ ownership - NZ First. The article states,

The government has finally admitted its folly over foreign ownership of New Zealand’s farms, says New Zealand First.

"When questioned in Parliament yesterday, Finance Minister Bill English first parroted the government line that Landcorp buying Crafar farms is not an obvious advantage to Landcorp or the New Zealand economy," says Spokesperson for Primary Industries Richard Prosser.

"However, Mr English then confirmed what farmers know but the government would not admit, until yesterday. He compared foreign corporate ownership of NZ farms to a fashion trend that came and went, but then revealed his own view that the ‘New Zealand owner-operator model - those who live it and love it - tend to be the only ones who can make money out of NZ farmland’.

First, a little knowledge of economics would suggest that the fact that the owner-operator model, normally a family-owned model, tend to be the ones to make money out of framing should not surprise anyone.

In New Zealand, and most other places, it is obvious that family-based firms still dominate in agriculture. Which is odd if you compare agriculture with, say, manufacturing, investor-owned firms predominate in manufacturing, So why not farming?

The short answer given by Allen and Lueck (1998) and Allen and Lueck (2002) is "nature". They argue that farms operate in unique circumstances defined by nature, in particular seasonality. This is the main feature that distinguishes farm organisation from industrial organisation. For farmers a season is a distinct period of the year during which a given activity is optimally undertaken.

This is key to understanding the why the incentives generated within agriculture favour family farms. The two basic issues are opportunities for hired workers to shirk due to random production shocks from nature and the limits on the gains from specialisation and the timing problems caused by seasonality. The trade-off between effect work incentives and gains from specialisation help determine the costs and benefits of different farm organisational types.

The family farm model provides the best work incentives since the owner is the sole recipient of the benefits, but this model misses some benefits due to specialisation. This follows from the fact that the farmer must engage in numerous different tasks during each stage of production, and in addition, numerous production stages throughout the year.

On the other hand, large factory-style corporate farms gain from a specialised labour force and lower cost of capital, but suffer from bad worker incentives since hired workers, not being one of the owners, have an increased incentive to shirk.

To some degree all firms are governed by the trade-off between gains from specialisation and work incentives. For the case of farming it is the unique, large impact of nature that biases it towards family operations.

An obvious, but key, feature of agriculture is that it involves a living, growing product. In the case of livestock, for example, you have breeding, husbandry, feeding and slaughter. Such a cycle is largely governed by nature. In principle there is no reason that a different farmer could not own each stage. But timing difficulties between stages result in high costs of engaging in market transactions. Such timing issues are particularly severe in farming because the inventories of the intermediate goods cannot be held given the living nature of the product.

There are a number of factors, such as the number of crop cycles, the length of the production stages and the number of tasks within a stage, which also influence wage labour incentives. When cycles are few, stages are short, random shocks are large and the tasks are few, there is little to gain from specialisation and labour is especially costly to monitor. Thus family farms.

If these issues can be overcome, that is, if farmers can mitigate seasonality and random shocks to output, farm organisation starts to look much like that in the rest of the economy. Under such conditions farm organisation will gravitate towards factory process and develop the large-scale corporate forms of other sectors of the economy. But thus far this hasn't happened.

Given the nature of farming, corporate ownership, be it local or foreign, isn't yet the most efficient form of ownership and thus it hasn't penetrated agriculture to the degree it has in other sectors of the economy.

So farms being in family ownership is simply a result of the economics of farming. It is the fact that the owner-operator model is the most efficient that is important here, not the nationality of the owner.

The economics of farming will give the result that most farms are in New Zealand hands, since family-owned business are most likely New Zealand owned business. There is no need for any xenophobic ownership restrictions to keep farms in New Zealand hands, the market will achieve this.

Also putting restrictions on ownership can prevent foreign investment in the situations where it is needed.

The Voxy article continues,

"Ownership of New Zealand property, be it residential or farmland, needs to be restricted to New Zealand citizens and permanent residents only, the end," says Mr Prosser.

Such restrictions are not need since as noted above when local ownership is efficient you get it, and there are times when you want foreign ownership. The point is that New Zealand gains the most when you get assets into the hands of those you value them most, who will use them most efficiently, and the restrictions on ownership can prevent this.

References:

• Allen, Douglas W. and Dean Lueck (1998). "The Nature of the Farm", Journal of Law and Economics, 41: 343-86.
• Allen, Douglas W. and Dean Lueck (2002). The Nature of the Farm: Contracts, Risk, and Organization in Agriculture, Cambridge Mass.: The MIT Press.

EconTalk this week

How important are basic skills for economic success and growth? Eric Hanushek of Stanford University's Hoover Institution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the importance of basic education in math and literacy and their relationship to economic growth. Hanushek argues that excellence in educating people in basic skills leads to economic growth, especially in poorer countries where years of education may be a poor proxy for learning. He argues that the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals should emphasize outputs rather than inputs--performance on skill-based exams rather than years of education.

A direct link to the audio is available here.

Housing and productivity

Up until now I have never really gotten the reason for people getting so excited about the effects of housing on productivity. When the Productivity Commission looked into the problems with housing in New Zealand it didn't seem to me to be the obvious factor explaining New Zealand's low productivity growth.

Well it turnouts I may have to rethink this issue. The Economist magazine has an article which explains How cheaper housing can boost productivity. They write,

To understand how cheap housing could boost productivity, consider the British economy. Inner London is by far the most productive region of the country, thanks to its clusters of finance, technology and nerds. More than one third of new jobs created in Britain since the recession have been based in the capital. London could create more still, but its lack of housing hems it in. The average house there now costs £370,000 ($577,000), nearly double the national average. Soaring demand has met stagnant supply. In the past decade the number of homes in London has grown by just 8%. The effect of high house prices is to push people out of London (or stop them moving in), and thus put them in less productive jobs. Others waste time on marathon commutes. From 2005 to 2014 the number of people commuting into London rose by 32%. One paper published in 2010 found that absenteeism among German workers would be 15-20% lower if they did not commute. If it were somehow possible to scrap commuting altogether, the British economy would see a productivity boost worth £12 billion a year, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, a think-tank.

Now if the effects of cheaper housing on productivity in New Zealand are of this order of magnitude then this is another big reason for doing something about freeing up the supply-side of the housing market. This makes reforming the local government regulation of building new homes or modifying existing ones look all that much more important. This is especially true of Auckland where the returns to reform will be the greatest since it has the greatest "clusters of finance, technology and nerds" in the country.

EconTalk this week

Wences Casares, bitcoin evangelist and founder and CEO of Xapo, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how bitcoin works, the genius of bitcoin's creator, and how Xapo is structured to create security for bitcoin banking.

A direct link to the audio is available here.

Government takes over Serco-run Mt Eden prison

That is the headline on an article at stuff.co.nz. In the article Aimee Gulliver writes,

Corrections Minister Sam Lotu-Iiga announces that the government is taking over Serco-run Mt Eden prison as of Monday.

The government is taking over the management of Mt Eden prison as of Monday, following serious allegations of prisoner mistreatment at the Serco-run facility.

Serco staff will remain on site but a management team will be put in place to oversee the day to day running of the facility.

The decision comes after a series of serious allegations at the Mt Eden prison, where inmates are claimed to have been thrown off balconies in a practice known as "dropping", and physically assaulted.

A question I would ask is, Should we be surprised at this outcome? One reason for saying no comes from the literature on privatisation, in particular the paper 'The Proper Scope of Government: Theory and an Application to Prisons' by Oliver D. Hart, Andrei Shleifer and Robert W. Vishny, "Quarterly Journal of Economics", 112(4) November: 1127-61, 1997. The paper considers the question as to which goods or services the government should provide, with an emphasis on prison services.

The HSV model considers the choice between in-house production and contracting out. The provider, government or private, can invest in improving the quality of service or reducing cost. Given incomplete contracts, the private provider has a stronger incentive to engage in both quality improvement and cost reduction than a government employee has. However, the private contractor's incentive to engage in cost reduction is typically too strong because he ignores the adverse effect on noncontractible quality. Cost are always lower under private ownership but quality may be higher or lower under a private owner.

Hence the focus of the HSV model is on quality. Here quality has a broad interpretation. It can stand for how well prisons treat prisoners, how clean utilities keep the water, how well schools educate their pupils, how long it takes for a letter to reach a remote area or how innovative car makers are etc. The basic idea is that the provider of the service, whether it be the government or a private firm, can made an investment to increase the quality of the service or a investment to reduce the cost of the service. It is important to note that quality is reduced by any cost reductions. Neither of these two investments are ex ante contractible. But to implement either of the innovations requires the agreement of the owner of asset. The asset can be thought of as, say, a school or a hospital or a prison. If the owner of the asset is the government then the provider of the service, who will be a government employee, requires the approval of the government to invoke either investment since, in this case, the residual control rights reside with the government. As a result, the employee will receive just a fraction of the returns to either innovation, even if implemented.

If on the other hand the provider is a private sector contractor, then the contractor has the residual control rights and thus does not need the government's agreement for a cost reduction. However, if the contractor wishes to improve the quality of the service and receive a higher price for it, then they have to renegotiate with the government since the government is the purchaser of the service. Under the assumption that the contractor is successful in obtaining an increase in price they capture all such gains. Thus a private contractor will generally face stronger incentives, than a government employee, to improve quality and reduce costs but the incentive to reduce costs can be too strong since the contractor ignores the negative impact this has on quality.

HSV examined the conditions that determine the relative efficiency of in-house provision versus outside contracting of government services. Their theoretical arguments suggest that the case for in-house provision is generally stronger when noncontractible cost reductions have large deleterious effects on quality, when quality innovations are unimportant, and when corruption in government procurement is a severe problem. In contrast, the case for privatisation is stronger when quality reducing cost reductions can be controlled through contract or competition, when quality innovations are important, and when patronage and powerful unions are a severe problem inside the government.

They then apply this analysis to several government activities using the available evidence on the importance of various factors. They conclude that the case for in-house provision is very strong in such services as the conduct of foreign policy and maintenance of police and armed forces, but can also be made reasonably persuasively for prisons. In contrast, the case for privatisation is strong in such activities as garbage collection and weapons production, but can also be made reasonably persuasively for schools.

With regard to prisons HSV write (p. 1152-4)

Prisons seem to fit reasonably well into our framework. Although in some respects prison contracts are very detailed, they are still seriously incomplete. There are significant opportunities for cost reduction that do not violate the contracts, but that, at least in principle, can substantially reduce quality. Moreover, from the available evidence we have the impression that the world may not be far from the assumptions of Proposition 4. First, the welfare consequences of quality deterioration might be of the same magnitude as those of cost reduction (b(e) and c(e) are comparable). Second, the opportunities for quality innovation are limited (beta(i) is small). Under these conditions, Proposition 4 suggests that public ownership is superior.

Would ex post competition between prisons for inmates strengthen the case for privatization? One possibility is that convicts themselves choose the prison in which to serve their sentences, but this is probably a bad idea, since prisoner choice would encourage contractors to attract customers by allowing gangs, drugs, and perhaps even easy escapes. A more plausible alternative is to have judges choose a private prison to send a convict to, with the idea that judges would send more inmates to higher quality prisons and fewer to lower quality prisons. Private contractors would then have the appropriate incentives to invest in quality improvements, and to avoid excessive cost reductions, to bring in more business. At the moment, such schemes have not been tried, in part because there is a shortage of prison capacity in the United States, but it is possible that they could be tried in the future. One potential disadvantage of such judge choice is that some judges might actually choose lower quality prisons because they want the inmates to get a stiffer penalty, whereas other judges might choose prisons that are soft on inmates. Contractors would then cater to the preferences of the judges, which need not coincide with social welfare.

Finally, the choice of whether to privatize prisons depends on the importance of corruption and patronage. Patronage does not appear to be a huge problem in prison employment in the United States, since the union premium as of this writing is not large. Corruption appears to be a greater concern, at least judging from the available anecdotal evidence. To begin, private prison companies are very active politically. For instance, ESMOR evidently lobbies politicians and makes political contributions to receive contracts {The New York Times, July 23, 1995}. The wife of Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander invested early and profitably in the stock of Corrections Corporation of America, which subsequently got involved very deeply in the privatization of Tennessee prisons with the governor’s endorsement {The New Republic, March 4, 1996, p. 9}.

A related problem is that contract enforcement cannot be taken for granted. The INS report concludes that ESMOR’s changes in policies “hindered INS ability to effectively perform its oversight functions.” The report also notes that ESMOR told its guards not to share information with the INS officials working on the premises, and in one instance encouraged the INS to reassign an officer who complained about the performance of the Elizabeth, New Jersey, facility several months prior to the riot. The report indicates that ESMOR violated the contract in some instances, and also pursued policies preventing the INS from enforcing the contract. But it is also clear from the report that the INS did not do what it could to enforce this contract. The INS report vividly illustrates how a government bureaucracy with relatively weak incentives has trouble enforcing a contract with a private supplier determined to reduce its costs, even if this involves violations of the contract and not just the issues on which the contract is silent.

In sum, our model suggests that a plausible theoretical case can be made against prison privatization. This case is weakened if competition for inmates can be made effective, but strengthened by the relevance of political activism by private contractors. One instance in which the case against prison privatization is stronger is maximum security prisons, where the prevention of violence by prisoners against guards and other prisoners is a crucial goal {The New York Times Magazine 1995}. In many cases, the principal strategy for preventing such violence is the threat of the use of force by the guards.We have shown that it is difficult to delineate contractually the permissible circumstances for the use of such force. Moreover, hiring less educated guards and undertraining them—which private prisons have a strong incentive to do—can encourage the unwarranted use of force by the guards. As a result, our arguments suggest that maximum security prisons should not be privatized so long as limiting the use of force against prisoners is an important public objective. Consistent with this view, only 4 of the 88 private prisons in Thomas’s {1995} census of private adult correctional institutions in the United States are maximum security. In contrast, private half-way houses and youth correctional facilities, where violence problems are less serious, are common {Shichor 1995}.

So there is a case to be made for private prisons, but it may not be as strong as for other services currently provided by the government, and it is at its weakest for the case of maximum security prisons. Thus seeing Mt Eden prison back under government management may not be that surprising. Maximum security prisons are an area where government provision can be more effective.