Peer reviews and rankings today are the backbone of research governance, but recently came under scrutiny. They take explicitly or implicitly agency theory as a theoretical basis. The emerging psychological economics opens a new perspective. As scholarly research is a mainly curiosity driven...

Standard economics uses a one-dimensional concept of motivation. It assumes that people are perfectly rational and are solely motivated in a selfish way. This essay argues that people differ in their preferences with respect to pro-social orientations, that preferences are plastic and...

There is relatively little systematic evidence on the links between procurement systems and outcomes such as competition and corruption levels. This paper adds to the evidence base, using data on almost 34,000 firms from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys, in 88 countries that also have...

Aggregate indexes of the quality of governance, covering large samples of countries, are widely used in research and in aid policy. Few studies examine the validity of these indexes, however. This paper partially fills this gap by examining empirically the dimensionality of the Worldwide...

Aggregate indexes of the quality of governance, covering large samples of countries, are widely used in research and in aid policy. Few studies examine the validity of these indexes, however. This paper partially fills this gap by examining empirically the dimensionality of the Worldwide...

Windfall revenues from foreign aid or natural resource exports can weaken governments' incentives to design or maintain efficient tax systems. Cross-country data for developing countries provide evidence for this hypothesis, using a World Bank indicator on "efficiency of revenue mobilization."...

Aggregate indexes of the quality of governance, covering large samples of countries, have become popular in comparative political analysis. Few studies examine the validity or reliability of these indexes. To partially fill this gap, this study uses factor, confirmatory factor and path analysis...

In the course of history, a large number of politicians have been assassinated. Rational choice hypotheses are developed and tested using panel data covering more than 100 countries over a period of 20 years. Several strategies, in addition to security measures, are shown to significantly reduce...