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  • New Orleans After Katrina Sequel

    This sequel accompanies the main case (1862.0). On Tuesday, August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans, causing inadequate levees to collapse and flood the city in what came to be widely seen as a man-made disaster. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) calculated that 105,000 of the city's 188,000 housing units were severely damaged or destroyed. It was the worst urban disaster in national memory. However, city leaders were not prepared to accept New Orleans' demise. On September 29, 2005, Mayor C. Ray Nagin appointed a blue-ribbon panel known as the Bring New Orleans Back (BNOB) commission to produce a reconstruction plan by the end of the year. Its volunteer members were leaders in the business and nonprofit worlds. BNOB turned for advice to the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a Washington, DC-based research and educational organization that sought to promote responsible development. HKS Case Number 1862.1
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  • Partnerships Victoria: The Public Sector Comparator

    The government of the State of Victoria in Australia has been a pioneer in using the private sector to provide public infrastructure through "public-private partnerships" (PPPs). Under PPP programs the government contracts with a private company not just to build a facility but to operate it over its expected life, as well. PPPs are used for "social" infrastructure such as courthouses and hospitals as well as for "economic" infrastructure such as toll roads or public transport. The Department of Treasury required that agencies pursuing a PPP demonstrate that the PPP would save money compared to traditional procurement options. But critics argued that the Treasury's guidelines for such cost comparisons were flawed. The debate raised issues about how to compare the risks assumed by the government under different procurement options and how the differences in risks should be reflected in the discount rates. HKS Case Number 1822.0
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  • Wireless Philadelphia

    This case tells the story of the decision by the city government of Philadelphia to develop a publicly-owned competitor to private high-speed internet connection systems ("broadband"). The case describes both the city''s rationale, its desire to attract new business and its fear that a "digital divide" was leaving poorer residents without affordable access to the World Wide Web, and its means of implementing its decision, through a new not-for-profit arm of city government, which would contract with a private provider. That private provider would agree to provide relatively low-cost wireless web access throughout the city, thereby creating the largest wireless network in the US to date; in return, the city would steer its own information technology business to the new system, which was designed to compete with the private firms Verizon and Comcast. The case is designed to promote a discussion of the nature and causes of monopoly by raising issues of whether the incumbent cable and telephone companies enjoy market power in any of the services they offer and, if so, whether it is advisable to build a new municipal system to promote competition. HKS Case Number 1824.0
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  • Singapore's Public Enterprises

    Singapore has experienced exceptional economic success, lifting its self from third world to first world in fewer than four decades. Moreover, public enterprises have been a key instrument in Singapore's economic growth instead of the obstacle that they are so often in other developing countries. By 2004, however, Singapore was rethinking the role of its public enterprises in part because its economic growth was slowing and its strategy seemed to be faltering. Critics worried that public enterprises were simply not nimble enough to keep pace in an increasingly competitive global economy while defenders argued that a small nation like Singapore could not afford to rely on private companies to make the strategic investments it needed to remain competitive. The debate in Singapore raised interesting questions for other countries. HKS Case Number 1817.0
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  • The British Water Industry (A): The Evolution of Price Cap Regulation

    This case, designed to be used either together with The British Water Industry (B):Glas Cymru and the Debate over Nonprofits (1810.0) or separately, describes the controversies in the British water industry in 2002, 13 years after it was privatized. The (A) case (revised January 2006) focuses on the industry's experience with price-cap regulation, the system of controlling monopoly that the British applied to all the utilities they privatized in the 1980s and 1990s. The case is intended to support a discussion of the difficulties of regulating of monopolies and the advantages and disadvantages of the price-cap approach. The (B) case focuses on the controversy over the conversion of a major for-profit water company into a nonprofit water company and is designed to support a discussion of the merits of for-profit and nonprofit firms and the optimal capital structure of for-profit firms. The two cases are linked together in that some observers blame difficulties in utility regulation for generating interest in nonprofit utilities. HKS Case Number 1809.0
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  • The British Water Industry (B): Glas Cymru and the Debate over Non-Profits

    This case, designed to be used either together with The British Water Industry (A): The Evolution of Price-Cap Regulation (1809.0) or separately, describes the controversies in the British water industry in 2002, 13 years after it was privatized. The (A) case focuses on the industry's experience with price-cap regulation, the system of controlling monopoly that the British applied to all the utilities they privatized in the 1980s and 1990s. The case is intended to support a discussion of the difficulties of regulating of monopolies and the advantages and disadvantages of the price-cap approach. The (B) case focuses on the controversy over the conversion of a major for-profit water company into a nonprofit water company and is designed to support a discussion of the merits of for-profit and nonprofit firms and the optimal capital structure of for-profit firms. The two cases are linked together in that some observers blame difficulties in utility regulation for generating interest in nonprofit utilities. HKS Case Number 1810.0
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  • EDM (Energie du Mali)

    In the spring of 2005, the government of Mali was negotiating major changes in the concession of Energie du Mali (EDM), the private firm that operated Mali's electricity and water services. The negotiations were being watched anxiously by the World Bank and the French bilateral aid agency, who had been promoting private participation as a mechanism for improving performance and increasing investment in infrastructure. The policy had had mixed results around the world, with many successes but also a number of high profile failures. But it had experienced the most difficulty in sub-Saharan Africa, where interest from private investors had been weaker, a relatively high proportion of the private concessions, leases, or management contracts had been cancelled and a number of others, like EDM, were in crisis. This case is designed to illustrate the difficulties of reforming state-owned enterprises in small and poor countries like many of those in sub-Saharan Africa. It can also be used to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of private participation including concessions, leases, and management contracts. HKS Case Number 1811.0
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  • AirTrans Airways, West Coast Service

    On March 4, 2003, AirTran Airways announced new non-stop service from Atlanta to Los Angeles. The routes were a major commitment for AirTran, and came at a time when the airline industry was in turmoil. The major airlines had lost a record $12 billion the previous year, and two were in bankruptcy. AirTran and two other low-cost carriers were the only sizeable airlines that were profitable, and all three were expanding rapidly. The stakes for the West Coast service increased when Jet Blue, one of the other low-cost carriers, announced it would start new service from Atlanta to Los Angeles and Delta, the incumbent on the route, announced that it would increase its non-stops from 5 to 13 per day. HKS Case Number 1789.0
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  • Congestion Charging in London (A) The Western Extension

    In July 2004, Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of Greater London, had to decide whether or not to expand the system of congestion charging he had implemented 17 months earlier. Skeptics had predicted fierce popular opposition or chaos from the original scheme, which required that cars and trucks pay a charge of £5 (US$7.95) to enter an 8-square-mile area of Central London between the hours of 7:00 am and 6:30 pm, Monday through Friday. The critics were confounded, however, when the £5 charge resulted in a substantial reduction in Central London congestion and the payment and enforcement mechanisms proved to be remarkably convenient and fair. The Mayor's proposal to extend the £5 charge to a congested area immediately to the west seemed risky, however, since the technical and political problems of charging might grow disproportionately with the size of the charging zone. HKS Case Number 1788.0
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  • Congestion Charging in London (B): The Economics of Charging

    In July 2004, Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of Greater London, had to decide whether or not to expand the system of congestion charging he had implemented 17 months earlier. Skeptics had predicted fierce popular opposition or chaos from the original scheme, which required that cars and trucks pay a charge of £5 (US$7.95) to enter an 8-square-mile area of Central London between the hours of 7:00 am and 6:30 pm, Monday through Friday. The critics were confounded, however, when the £5 charge resulted in a substantial reduction in Central London congestion and the payment and enforcement mechanisms proved to be remarkably convenient and fair. The Mayor's proposal to extend the £5 charge to a congested area immediately to the west seemed risky, however, since the technical and political problems of charging might grow disproportionately with the size of the charging zone. HKS Case Number 1788.0
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  • Liconsa and the Program of Social Assistance for Milk

    In 2003, officials in Mexico's Ministry of Social Development were debating whether to eliminate a long-standing program that provided subsidized milk to poor families. In its place, they would expand a new program that gave poor families educational and nutritional cash grants provided that they kept their children in school and made regular visits to health clinics. The milk program, operated by an agency called Liconsa, had been spared so far because it did not require direct budgetary resources due to its preferential access to imported powdered milk. Nevertheless, advocates of expanding the cash grant program argued that the milk program was redundant and less effective. This case can be used to discuss the choices in designing assistance to the poor in economics and social policy courses or to discuss the theory of the consumer in economics courses. HKS Case Number 1766.0
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  • Shelter and Poverty Assistance in Nouakchott

    In the summer of 2002 the Commissariat for Human Rights, Poverty Alleviation, and Social Inclusion, an agency of the government of Mauritania, had to decide whether and how to modify its Twizé program of shelter and poverty assistance. The program had been piloted in the Dar el Beida resettlement area on the outskirts of Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott, in 1999 and then extended to three other similar resettlement areas in 2000 and 2001. But the Commissariat was worried that the pilot had been expensive, and that it could not afford to apply the Twizé program more widely in its current form. HKS Case Number 1706.0
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  • Portland's Urban Growth Boundary and Housing Prices (B): Note on Measuring Housing Prices

    In December of 2002, the Metro Council of Portland, Oregon had to decide whether or not to expand the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) for the metropolitan area. The UGB had been created as a tool to help promote a more compact, livable, and efficient metropolitan area. But Portland's housing prices had been increasing rapidly, and home builders and others were arguing that the UGB was at fault for too tightly restricting the supply of developable land. This case, intended for a course in urban planning or economics, is designed to support a discussion of how the various forces of supply and demand, including zoning restrictions, affect the price of housing. It can also stimulate an examination of the rationale for various types of zoning or growth controls. Part A (1703.0) describes the basic debate, while Part B (1704.0) is an optional note that provides additional background on how housing prices are measured. HKS Case Number 1704.0
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  • Portland's Urban Growth Boundary and Housing Prices (A): The Debate

    In December of 2002, the Metro Council of Portland, Oregon had to decide whether or not to expand the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) for the metropolitan area. The UGB had been created as a tool to help promote a more compact, livable, and efficient metropolitan area. But Portland's housing prices had been increasing rapidly, and home builders and others were arguing that the UGB was at fault for too tightly restricting the supply of developable land. This case, intended for a course in urban planning or economics, is designed to support a discussion of how the various forces of supply and demand, including zoning restrictions, affect the price of housing. It can also stimulate an examination of the rationale for various types of zoning or growth controls. Part A (1703.0) describes the basic debate, while Part B (1704.0) is an optional note that provides additional background on how housing prices are measured. HKS Case Number 1703.0
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  • Career Caravan

    In the summer of 2000, Bob Embry, the President of the Abell Foundation, asked two consultants to evaluate the performance Career Caravan, a job-to-work transportation program that his foundation was helping to fund. Career Caravan took low-income residents of West Baltimore to jobs in suburban Howard County, Maryland. The idea was that good jobs were more plentiful in the suburbs than in the central city, but that Baltimore's public transit system did not serve dispersed suburban employment centers well and many inner city residents did not have driver's licenses or own cars. But Embry was concerned that "reverse commute" programs like Career Caravan were expensive and did not do away with the need for costly job training to make the clients, many of whom had never been employed before, "job ready." HKS Case Number 1695.0
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  • DART's Suburban Service

    In the spring of 2000, planners at Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), the regional public transit agency serving the Dallas metropolitan area, had to decide whether to cancel or modify a poorly performing bus route serving the suburban cities of Garland and Rowlett. The route was typical of many that DART operated in the suburbs, so the decision raised basic questions about DART's strategy as a public agency, and particularly whether it could design suburban services that were useful and cost-effective enough to maintain the political and financial support it received from Dallas' suburbs. The fact that the route is performing so poorly-losing $27 per passenger, for example-encourages students to think about more radical service and political strategies for the agency. HKS Case Number 1696.0
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  • Arsenic in Drinking Water

    In January, 2001, on the last day of the term of President William Clinton, the US Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) had reduced the maximum permissible level of arsenic in drinking water from 50 to 10 parts per billion (ppb). Incoming President Bush had quickly suspended the new arsenic standard and other "last minute" Clinton regulations to allow time for review. In October, 2001, after nine months of study, Bush's EPA Administrator, Christine Whitman had to decide what the arsenic standard should be. This case is intended for use in a graduate course in applied microeconomics to illustrate the issues in setting an environmental standard, including the problems of quantifying benefits and the possibility of local instead of national standards. HKS Case Number 1680.0
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  • Argentina's Telecommunications Industry and the Economic Crisis of 2002

    During the 1990s, Argentina carried out an ambitious program of economic reforms, including the privatization of its telephone system and other state-owned utilities. In 2002, however, a severe economic crisis forced Argentina to default on its foreign debts, devalue its foreign currency, and freeze bank accounts. As part of the emergency measures, the government ordered the freezing of telephone and other utility tariffs and the renegotiation of all utility concession contracts. HKS Case Number 1678.0
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  • RWE and the Proposal for a German Electricity Regulator

    In April 2001, Dietmar Kuhnt, CEO of the German energy giant RWE, had to make a decision that would affect his company's future. Profits in the electricity sector depended heavily on regulatory rules that influenced industry structure and pricing. RWE had emerged through deregulation as one of the largest electricity companies in Germany and a multiutility. Now there was a proposal on the table to replace the largely lighthanded regulatory model based on negotiation between private parties with a more traditional regulatory model of an industry-specific regulator. What type of regulatory regime would be best suited to RWE's ambitious strategy to grow and prosper?
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  • Cochin International Airport: Gateway to God's Own Country

    Cochin International Airport opened in 1999 to widespread acclaim as the first and only airport to be constructed and operated by a private company in India. By 2001 the airport was generating enough revenue to cover its operating costs, but not enough to service its debt or to pay dividends to its shareholders. The airport company was already in technical default to its lenders, and its Managing Director had to figure out quickly how to improve profits or to convince shareholders to make further large infusions of equity. This case is intended to support a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of having private companies build and operate major infrastructure facilities, such as airports. It was developed for use in an executive program on the privatization and regulation of infrastructure and utilities, but it could also be used in Master's level courses on privatization, infrastructure, and industrial policy. HKS Case Number 1650.0
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