Throughout the smart city literature, there are mentions of capacities, the application of which is claimed to result in the sustainable achievement of objectives. Because of the often desperate need for smart city objectives to be met, we sought to understand which were the capacities and whether the components of these capacities are explained sufficiently for them to be effective in practice. We applied a four-stage methodology commencing with a search of multiple databases for smart city capacity knowledge. We next assembled the evidence from the items identified in that search using a thematic analysis that identified the capacity to exploit technology, innovate, collaborate, and orchestrate. Next, we followed the threads of knowledge, iteratively allocating the knowledge to each of the four capacities to a typology of what, why, and who. The fourth stage was a cross-capacity analysis that generated further refinement and identified important factors. We identified that capacities are not sufficiently explained. In addition to the need for more levels of detail as to practical implementation, we identified significant underdevelopment of the literature as to the impact of institutional complexity and the influence of stakeholders. We propose research directed at increasing the effectiveness of capacities, define the concept of smart city capacities, propose a framework of the components of capacities, and draw on established stakeholder theory to create a stakeholder influence research framework.

Evidence-based decision making is promoted as offering efficiency and effectiveness; however, its uptake has faced barriers such as underdeveloped supporting culture, limited access to evidence, and evidence that is not fully relevant. Smart city conceptualizations offer economic and environmental sustainability and better quality of life through evidence-based policy decision-making. We wondered whether smart city theory and practice has advanced the knowledge of evidence-based decision-making. We searched major databases for literature containing a mention of smart cities, decision-making, and policy. We identified relevant literature from a range of disciplines and supplemented these by following backwards and forwards citations. Evidence-based decision-making was found mostly in literature regarding the theory and practice of smart city operations, and, to lesser extents, the articles regarding policy decisions and tactical decisions. Better decision-making which supported the achievement of city sustainability objectives was reported in some articles; however, we found significant obstacles to the further achievement of city objectives in the areas of underachievement in collaborative decision-making, privileging of big data evidence, and artificial intelligence agents as decision-makers. We assembled a definition of smart city decision-making and developed an agenda of research which will support city governments, theorists, and practitioners in better achieving sustainability through improved decision-making.

Collaboration is problematic in the public sector, yet many smart city theorists advocate relationships fully dependent upon collaboration to address the intense complexity encountered by city governments and achieve city objectives of quality of life, efficiency, effectiveness, and economic and environmental sustainability. Skeptical, we inductively drew together the widely dispersed theoretical tenets of smart city collaboration into a framework of collaborative relationships and tested this framework using secondary evidence as to practice in greater Amsterdam. Mostly authentic collaborative relationships were explicated. Theory is extended by clarifying the roles of actors, especially the role of city government as actor and steward of the collaborative ecosystem. Future research should unpack the factors that impact the sustainability of smart city collaborations.

Responding to the perceived dysfunctions of New Public Management (NPM) and Agency theory, New Public Governance (NPG) and Stewardship theory offer conceptualizations of the behaviour of the for-profit service provider as well as a governance system that better meet community expectations as to the performance of privatized public infrastructure. Empirical research involving privatized water services was carried out to test if these conceptualizations adequately explain the reality of modern governance systems and organizational behaviour. NPG presented as a framework appropriate for understanding the reality of governance systems establishing a context for the foundational level stewardship behaviour of the for-profits.

We speculate that COVID-19 will drive engineering asset owners to require governance entities such as boards of management (BoM), to elevate engineering asset management (EAM) to being a corporate level strategy and core competence. We sought to understand whether there was a fit-for-purpose conceptualization of EAM as a corporate level strategy.

Uncertainty and its profound impact on the management of infrastructure project portfolios is introduced. The advent of COVID-19 is depicted as a defining event in the management of infrastructure. This study applies the Black Scholes option valuation model and real options analysis to determine value for money in front-end engineering for Australian megaprojects. The findings indicate that despite the fact all current Australian infrastructure projects examined had a positive net present value and a benefit to cost ratio greater than one, almost sixty percent of the planned expenditure was for projects for which real options analysis indicated the engineering as being poor value for money. The paper concludes with recommendations to manage the national portfolio of infrastructure projects as a pipeline of carefully chosen pre-engineered options, some of which are constructible projects and others being non-asset, demand management solutions.

The Supreme Court's reasoning in Leegin turned on the insight that manufacturers may use resale price maintenance (RPM) for procompetitive purposes. This paper presents a model of manufacturer-retailer interactions that clarifies why, as a rule, retailers and manufacturers are joint beneficiaries of service-inducing RPM. The model identifies factors that determine how RPM-generated benefits are allocated between a manufacturer and its retailers. The paper then shows that manufacturers may use market share discounts (MSD) in lieu of RPM or other vertical restraints to induce retailer performance. The outcomes and efficiency effects that are achieved with RPM can be replicated and usually surpassed if manufacturers substitute MSD for RPM, thereby enabling a manufacturer to retain all incremental profit rather than conceding some of it to retailers.

Large retailers may exercise buyer power in their interactions with manufacturers. This article explores the use of exclusive dealing arrangements by a monopoly retailer when purchasing a differentiated product from competing manufacturers. Interactions among the firms are modeled as a bargaining game. When consumers' brand preferences are weak and/or when one brand is preferred by a significant majority of consumers, it is more profitable for the retailer to negotiate an exclusive dealing arrangement with one of the manufacturers than to distribute both products. Also, it is more profitable for the retailer to induce exclusive dealing if the manufacturer of the excluded brand has a lot of bargaining power when negotiating with the retailer. If buyer-induced exclusive dealing reduces the retail price of the exclusive brand in order to encourage "brand switching" by consumers who favor the excluded brand, the practice may increase consumer welfare and even total welfare.

The partnership form of privatisation is increasingly being used, in particular to carry out complex and evolving bundles of services. These have not previously been privatised because of incomplete contracts and contract management difficulties. Improved performance of the government entity as contract administrator and member of the partnership is crucial to modern service delivery expectations yet the privatisation literature has focused on other aspects of partnerships leaving the understanding of factors impacting the effectiveness of the government entity underdeveloped. This paper proposes the development of knowledge as to the range of factors which impact the effectiveness of the government entity. There is limited data available as to the operation of trust in the partnership relationship, and as to the capability of a range of privatisation forms to achieve stewardship of infrastructure. This research will utilise the findings from that research to build a tentative framework which will be utilised in staged research interrogating first the privatisation literature and then the literature of other disciplines and sectors. The combined data will be analysed to provide government and practitioners such as government entity CEO’s with a complete listing of the operation of the factors which impact the effectiveness of the government entity in contributing to improved service delivery.

AbstractPredatory pricing occurs when a dominant firm adopts a strategy of charging prices below cost in order to drive rivals out of business—with the prospect of charging high prices in the future and recouping its losses. The economic conditions required for this strategy to be effective are constrained. Current antitrust case law, notably the Court’s Brooke Group decision, provides reasonable criteria for identifying genuine cases of predation.

The widely recognized influence that the Chicago school of law and economics had on the institution of antitrust is nowhere more apparent than in predatory-pricing law. Starting with Aaron Director, this movement had many distinguished contributors. But even in this company, Robert Bork stands out for his part in persuading the judiciary to refocus antitrust law on the interests of consumers rather than on the interests of competing firms. In The Antitrust Paradox and other writings, Bork advanced the Chicago school insight that the kind of aggressive price cutting that, at the time, passed for predatory pricing is instead an essential and, for consumers, beneficial attribute of competition. The resulting change in direction that antitrust has taken in predatory-pricing cases culminated in the Court's Matsushita (Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. v. Zenith Ratio Corp., 475 U.S. 574 [1986]) and Brooke Group (Brooke Group Ltd. v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 509 U.S. 209 [1993]) opinions, both of which bear the marks of Bork's influence.

The countervailing power of large buyers subdues the market power of sellers, but price concessions won by large buyers in upstream markets may or may not translate into lower prices downstream as Galbraith (American capitalism: The concept of countervailing power. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1952, Am Econ Rev 44:1–6, 1954) once contended. This paper presents a model that formalizes certain previously neglected elements of Galbraith’s argument, and shows that upstream price concessions may lead to lower downstream prices. In this model, a large retail chain store with countervailing power plays one large supplier off against another to win lower prices. An indirect effect of these interactions is that small retailers also pay lower prices, although not as low as the chain. Finally, competition among the retailers drives retail prices lower. The retail-price-restraining effect of the chain is stronger than the effect that is produced by the entry of an additional supplier.

Abba Lerner’s paper in the Review of Economic Studies (1934) is the source of what is now referred to as the Lerner Index of monopoly power. The Lerner Index has become the standard measure of monopoly power and one of the most widely cited indexes in the discipline of economics. This paper traces the origins of the index, sets out its strengths and weaknesses, and examines its role in antitrust enforcement. The Index is a better indicator of a firm’s price-setting discretion than its ability to sustain monopoly prices.

Loyalty discounts and rebates are pricing schemes that offer incentives to buyers for reaching or exceeding certain sales thresholds. In the case of market share discounts, thresholds are expressed as a percentage of the buyer's total purchase requirements. Although market share discounts may have exclusionary effects under certain circumstances when a seller has significant market power, there are plausible nonexclusionary reasons for offering them as well. Two such reasons - rent extraction and inducing downstream selling effort - are explored in this paper. The paper considers the case of a manufacturer who sells a differentiated good through a network of heterogeneous, non-exclusive retailers. The manufacturer offers market share discounts to induce noncontractible selling effort such as brand-specific information or customer service from those retailers who possess certain unobservable characteristics. In some instances, market share discounts induce increased selling effort and improve market performance as compared to linear pricing. In other instances, they have no effect on aggregate benefits, but merely shift the rents created by induced selling effort upstream to the manufacturer. In no instance, as long as the producers of substitute goods retain sufficient sales to remain viable, do market share discounts impair market performance.