Presents a complete and detailed constitutional framework applying the rational self-interest model and market mechanisms to intra and inter- governmental behaviour and collective decisions. In particular, the paper presents an enabling mechanism for the creation, adjustment and dissolution of...

In an endogenous-growth model, we consider alternative ways of providing public capital using distortionary taxes. We show that if the government provides the good, the resulting growth rate and welfare may or may not be higher than under laissez-faire. By contrast, if the government subsidizes...

This paper anlyzes the impact of tax competition between two countries of un- equal per-capita capital endownments on tax rates and efficiency when distorting wage, residence-based and source-based capital taxes (or any combination of two instruments) are available for governments. The national...

Generally, with a standard linear public goods game, one observes at the aggregate level that contributions lay between the Nash equilibrium and the social optimum and decrease over time with an end-effect.Our purpose is to see whether these general aggregate results remain available at the...

This is a commentary on Vernon Smith's contributions to experimental economics

Standard official measures of economic well-being are based on money income. The general consensus is that such measures are seriously flawed because they ignore several crucial determinants of well-being. We examine two such determinants-household wealth and public consumption-in the context of...

This paper studies an unusually comprehensive data-set of the universe of research groups that applied to an Italian 1989 93 research programme in biotechnology and bio-instrumentation. We develop a model to test whether past publications influence the expected grants obtained by the units in...

By the end of 1999 HIV/AIDS was present in at least 200 countries and approximately 34.3 million people were living with the disease, 5.3 million of whom had been infected in that year alone (WHO 2000). Approximately 21.8 million persons had died from AIDS by 2000 and countries where life...

This paper defines a general equilibrium model with exchange and club formation. Agents trade multiple private goods widely in the market, can belong to several clubs, and care about the characteristics of the other members of their clubs. The space of agents is a continuum, but clubs are...