We consider a market in which a public firm completes against private ones, and ask what happens when the public firms is privatized. In the short run, privatization is harmful because prices rise: the disciplinary role of the public firm is lost. In the long run, privatization, leads to further...

We consider a market in which a public firm competes against private ones, and ask what happens when the public firm is privatized. In the short run, privatization is harmful because prices rise: the disciplinary role of the public firm is lost. In the long run, privatization leads to further...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of privatization in a mixed duopoly, where a private firm competes in quantities with a welfare-maximizing public firm. We consider two inefficiencies of the public sector: a possible cost inefficiency, and an allocative inefficiency due to...

In this paper, we study the welfare effects of monetary policy in a simple overlapping generation economy in which agents voluntary contribute to a public good. Inflation has two effects at equilibrium: it increases voluntary contributions and it misallocates private consumption across time. We...

This paper studies the relationship between fiscal decentralization and electoral accountability, by analyzing how decentralization impacts upon incentive and selection effects, and thus on voter welfare. The model abstracts from features such as public good spillovers or economies of scale, so...

In a context of asymmetry of information between firms' owners and their managers, we investigate the use of incentive contracts as strategic variables in an oligopoly industry. Moreover, we consider that the government has the possibilityto intervene in the market by nationalizing an incumbent...

This paper presents a model of nation formation in which culturally heterogeneous agents vote on the optimal level of public spending. Larger nations benefit from increasing returns in the provision of public goods, but bear the costs of greater cultural heterogeneity. This tradeoff induces...

In this paper we study the role of private debt financing in disciplining a state owned firm operating for a government that incurs a cost of public financing. We show that debt contracts allow the government to avoid socially costly subsidies by letting unprofitable state- owned firms default....

The focus of this paper is on the trade-off between cost efficiency and access in the choice of the optimal mix of public and private provision in universal health systems. We model a simple health care market in which the regulator acts as a third payer. Patients need one unit of medical...

In this paper, we discuss the choice for build-operate-and-transfer (BOT) concessions when governments and firm managers do not share the same information regarding the operation characteristics of a facility. We show that larger shadow costs of public funds and larger information asymmetries...