This paper is motivated to investigate the often neglected payoff to investments in the health of girls and women in terms of next generation outcomes. This paper investigates the intergenerational persistence of health across time and region as well as across the distribution of maternal...

According to our model effective 'budgetary' separation of power occurs in the states with the line-item veto when the Governor is not aligned with the Legislature. Only then is the Legislature, which approves the budget and sets the tax level, not the full residual claimant of a tax release....

In this paper we focus on the implications of consumer heterogeneity for whether competition will improve outcomes in health care markets. We show that competition generally favours the majority group as higher quality for the majority is an effective way to increase the quality signal and...

Consider a principal-agent relationship in which more effort by the agent raises the likelihood of success. This paper provides conditions such that no success bonus induces the agent to exert more effort and the optimal contract is independent of success. Moreover, success bonuses may even...

Should the Federal government and the remaining American states adopt the line item veto? What are its effects? We use regression discontinuity design to claim that in states with the line item veto, divided government has a causal negative effect on the tax level. By investigating a panel of 38...

This paper proposes a normative theory of constitutional rules. The first-best cannot be achieved whenever constitutional rules cannot be made contingent on information about the costs and benefits of policy reforms. We characterize and welfare rank four classes of second best constitutions:...

We analyze the reform of public sector welfare services such as education. In this paper we compare a mix of private and a public service provider with full privatization. In both cases the suppliers specialize in serving particular customer types. In the mixed institution the government sets...

Not-for-profit firms are greatly over-represented in the childcare, medical care, education and care for the aged sectors where service providing workers, as well as purchasers, seem to care about the level or quality of service being provided. Since all individuals who care about service levels...

Despite the potential for free-riding, workers motivated by 'making a difference' to the mission or output of an establishment may donate labor to it. When the establishment uses performance related compensation (PRC), these labor donations closely resemble a standard private provision of public...

This paper analyzes the effect of reputation on ownership of public goods in the Besley and Ghatak (2001) model. We show that in the dynamic setup the optimal ownership depends not only on the relative valuations for the public good but also on technology (elasticity of investment). We also show...