Trevor L. Brown

TL;DR: In this article, the authors apply a transaction cost framework complemented with institutional and market theories to examine governments' service production decisions, arguing that governments select production mechanisms in part to minimize risks associated with delivering services under alternative institutional arrangements.

TL;DR: The contracting of public services has been an integral part of public managers' work for a long time, and it is here to stay as mentioned in this paper, and the current research on the topic sums up current research for busy practitioners and scholars.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the way in which municipal and county governments respond to transaction cost factors inherent in contract service delivery and found that when governments contract for services in contexts that risk contract failure, they engage in a variety of monitoring techniques to improve their ability to monitor and correct vendor performance.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify specific capacities that governments can use to harness the promise of contracting while avoiding its pitfalls, and present analyses of data on municipal and county government contracting activities that show how governments invest in contract-management capacity in response to several internal and external threats to effective contract performance.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on two service characteristics that transaction cost theory suggests may influence the chances of contract success: asset specificity, the extent to which resources applied to delivering a service can be applied to other services, and ease of measurement.