The tension at the heart of pension politics is the incentive to satisfy today's claimants in the here and now at the expense of long-term concerns. Teacher pensions, in particular, pose two challenges. The first is that political incentives invite irresponsible fiscal stewardship, as public...

Water supply investments in developing countries may inadvertently worsen sanitation if clean water and sanitation are substitutes. This paper examines the negative correlation between the provision of piped water and household sanitary behavior in Cebu, the Philippines. In a model of household...

When SARS struck Taiwan in the spring of 2003, many people feared that the disease would spread through the healthcare system. As a result, outpatient medical visits fell by over 30 percent in the course of a few weeks. This paper examines how both public information (SARS incidence reports) and...