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Social housing providers in many advanced economies have been directed towards market-orientated and commercial business models, whereas the scope of the private rental sector has been increasingly expanded to the provision of housing for low-income households. Where these developments coincided, the demarcation between the activities of social and private landlords has blurred, with the result of increasing competitive pressure on both groups. This paper sheds light on the behavioural aspects of competition by introducing the concept of inter-landlord rivalry in local rental housing markets. Drawing on data from 36 in-depth interviews with social and private landlords in Coventry/England and Breda/the Netherlands, this study shows that existing perceptions of rivalry among most landlords are exceptional in low-income renting but pronounced in more expensive, commercial rental segments. The paper will demonstrate that these perceptions are highly subjective and non-reciprocal. Moreover, competitive perceptions and interactions are strongly affected by political and market structural settings, and appear to be dependent on the trade-off between the social mission and commercial goals of individual housing associations in the social housing sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A national health care service is one of the central pillars of the welfare state in Europe. Recent moves to modernise health care, alongside introducing efficiencies through competition have resulted in experimentation and a re-organisation of national health care systems. The experimental nature of the reforms has brought health care into the focus, but uncertain territory, of EU economic law, especially competition law. Added to these pressures, the new EU fiscal measures oblige Member States to avoid excessive budgets and macro-economic imbalances. One constraint on an EU-based system of competition in health care is the effect of decentralisation, resulting in variations at the national level. Thus a case study is taken of the experience in The Netherlands. From this case study, we argue that a new form of Euro-national competition law is emerging for the health care sector with national authorities taking the lead in shaping the contours of this law. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines how Dutch and British students socially construct the positional competition for jobs within their educational and labour market contexts. The findings illustrate two contrasting approaches to employability. The competition for jobs as understood by the Dutch students is based on absolute performance, an unclear relationship between skills and the labour market, and the development of human capital in areas of experiences, skills and abilities. For the British students it is based on relative performance, ranking of candidates and the importance of signals. The study also shows that these principles are aligned to national labour market and educational contexts. These results highlight the importance of the institutional context in how the positional competition for graduate jobs is played out. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]