For at least fifty years economists have argued that vertically-aggregated marginal willingness to pay, when set equal to marginal provision cost, will result in optimal public good provision levels. This methodological approach would be expected to yield an exact analog, in terms of optimal...

This work provides experimental evidence of the determinants of tax compliance in Mexico, and compares them to the results of an experiment administered in the United States reported by Alm, Jackson and McKee (1992). The results for both countries are contrasted to the predictions of the...

This paper focuses on the relationship between public action and access to public goods. It begins by developing a simple model of collective action which is intended to capture the various mechanisms that are discussed in the theoretical literature on collective action. We argue that several of...

This Paper discusses the economic merits of direct or indirect governmental support for open source projects. Software markets differ from standard textbook markets in three important respects that may give rise to market failures: (i) large economies of scale, (ii) crucially important...

The paper discusses the role of regional public goods vs. global goods in influencing postcommunist transition in Central and Eastern Europe and former USSR with special attention given to three particular factors: (i) external anchoring of national reform process; (ii) international trade...

Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with...

Models on private provision of public goods typically involve a single private good and linear production technology for the public good. We study a model with several private goods and non-linear (strictly concave) production technology. We revisit the question of “neutrality” of government...

We examine debt-sensitive majority rules. According to such a rule, the higher a planned public debt, the higher the parliamentary majority required to approve it. In a two-period model we compare debt-sensitive majority rules with the simple majority rule when individuals differ regarding their...