Bronwyn Howell, ISCR General Manager
Wellington
MBA (Distinction), Victoria University of Wellington, 1999
BA (Honours), Victoria University of Wellington 1981
BA Mathmatics and English Literature, Victoria University of Wellington, 1980
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Research Interests
- Information Economics
- Industrial Organisation with a focus on the Health and Technology Sectors.
Selected publications
Academic Journal
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This article discusses the role of incentives to reduce the occurrence of medical misadventure. It argues that appropriate incentives may induce the practice of appropriate levels of precaution, by sharing the costs of insufficient levels of precaution between those with the power to exert clinical precaution (practitioners) and monitor and enforce its exertion (administrative agencies), and the victims who will otherwise bear the costs of inadequate levels of precaution being taken.
Other
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Bronwyn Howell's paper and presentation for the Tullock Lecture on 'Big Ideas About Information', presented at the Information Economy Project, George Mason University, Arlington Virginia, 25 September 2012. Link here
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The New Zealand arrangements lead to some very unusual allocations of costs and financial risk relative to standard managed care models. Specifically, all risk management responsibilities lie with a large number of very small providers, leading to high costs in respect of statistical variation in the allocation of patient pools and demand for care amongst practitioners. As only practitioners can charge fees, a disproportionate share of the costs of risk management are borne by ill individuals, in proportion to each time they visit a general practitioner. The paper illustrates these ‘perverse' effects using two recent demand shocks
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Drawing upon the principles of markets with two-sided platforms, which are similarly characterised by approaches to competition where welfare is maximised when prices differ from marginal cost, this paper develops an alternative taxonomy for thinking about institutional design and the application of competition principles in health care markets.
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This paper takes as a starting point for developing deeper understandings the assumption that both regulatory bodies and the sectors in which they operate are institutions. The body of literature about the operation of institutions provides a means of understanding the actors, arrangements, rules and culture, values and norms that shape the ICTS sector. With this understanding, it is then possible to analyse using the same frameworks how these same forces act upon and shape the regulatory institutions, and ultimately how the regulatory institutions themselves contribute to shaping the wider ICTS sector in which they operate.
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The paper finds that the change in arrangements is likely to lead to higher costs of financial risk and reduction in the level of competition between providers of health care services
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This report suggests that the telecommunications market in New Zealand is surprisingly mature. We infer that the potential for growth is limited.
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The purpose of our study is to provide some additional data to increase understanding of any potential New Zealand geographical differences in business use of the Internet. Consistent with the definition of electronic commerce used in both the MED/BRC and ISCR studies, we define "business use of the internet" to be any business use to which the Internet
is put, thus including both transactions of information (email, advertising, web-based searches), and buying and selling (business to business and business to consumer) exchanges.
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Bronwyn Howell looks into the "Digital Divide" in New Zealand.
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Working Papers
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ISCR General Manager Bronwyn Howell was honoured to be invited by the Information Economy Project at George Mason University to deliver The Tullock Lecture on ‘Big Ideas About Information’ on 25 September in Arlington, Virginia:
Policy makers in the U.S. and around the world are wrestling with “the broadband problem” – how to get advanced forms of Internet access to businesses and consumers. A variety of regulatory approaches have been used, some focusing on incentives to drive deployment of rival networks, others on network sharing mandates or government subsidies. Despite a wealth of diverse experience, there seems to be a great deal of confusion about what the data actually suggest. Few people have studied these data more carefully, however, than New Zealand economist Bronwyn Howell, who will frame the lessons of the global broadband marketplace.
George Mason University link to The Tullock Lecture on Big Ideas About Information here
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Bronwyn Howell presented this paper at the TPRC Conference 21-23 Sept 2012 giving a comparative analysis of the competitive regimes governing the Australian and New Zealand fast fibre network deployments.
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This paper was co-authored with Bronwyn Howell and presented by Bert Sadowski (ISCR ST Lee Fellow 2012) at the TPRC conference 21-23 Sept 2012. Bert Sadowski will present this paper on pubic-private-partnerships (PPP) he prepared as S T Lee Fellow at ISCR in February and March 2012.
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Carolyn Cordery presented this paper's overview (co-authored with Bronwyn Howell)at the NZ Association for the study of Cooperatives & Mutuals conference held in Wellington 21-22 June 2012. Link here
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Bronwyn Howell presented this paper at the NZ Association for the study of Cooperatives & Mutuals held in Wellington 21-22 June 2012.
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The New Zealand arrangements lead to some very unusual allocations of costs and financial risk relative to standard managed care models. Specifically, all risk management responsibilities lie with a large number of very small providers, leading to high costs in respect of statistical variation in the allocation of patient pools and demand for care amongst practitioners. As only practitioners can charge fees, a disproportionate share of the costs of risk management are borne by ill individuals, in proportion to each time they visit a general practitioner. The paper illustrates these ‘perverse' effects using two recent demand shocks
Download (PDF) 183kB
Drawing upon the principles of markets with two-sided platforms, which are similarly characterised by approaches to competition where welfare is maximised when prices differ from marginal cost, this paper develops an alternative taxonomy for thinking about institutional design and the application of competition principles in health care markets.
Download (PDF) 235kB
Download (PDF) 33kB
Download (PDF) 223kB
This article discusses the role of incentives to reduce the occurrence of medical misadventure. It argues that appropriate incentives may induce the practice of appropriate levels of precaution, by sharing the costs of insufficient levels of precaution between those with the power to exert clinical precaution (practitioners) and monitor and enforce its exertion (administrative agencies), and the victims who will otherwise bear the costs of inadequate levels of precaution being taken.
Download (PDF) 4.1MB
We acknowledge the considerable difficulties in measuring and assessing the complete range of benefits arising from the use of these technologies, given that the ultimate effects of their use are hard to separate out from other factors. Hence, we once again test our hypothesis: that if New Zealand is performing at the international forefront of infrastructure indicators, then there is every reason to believe that, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it is performing well also in those areas where no measurable or reliable indicators of performance are available.
Download (PDF) 215kB
The purpose of our study is to provide some additional data to increase understanding of any potential New Zealand geographical differences in business use of the Internet. Consistent with the definition of electronic commerce used in both the MED/BRC and ISCR studies, we define "business use of the internet" to be any business use to which the Internet
is put, thus including both transactions of information (email, advertising, web-based searches), and buying and selling (business to business and business to consumer) exchanges.
Download (PDF) 311kB
This paper argues that content availability, and a cost-benefit trade-off supported by bundled products combining access and content, has stimulated demand for the cable product, thereby creating competitive pressure on DSL offerings. While local loop unbundling posits faster response to this competitive pressure, the OECD data provide little evidence to suggest that the primary driver is infrastructure availability. Rather, the evidence implies that application costbenefit tradeoffs are the primary drivers of broadband uptake
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Bronwyn Howell looks into the "Digital Divide" in New Zealand.
Download (PDF) 38kB