One of the policy options to increase the efficiency in the provision of scarce water resources is a reduction in transaction costs in water chains by developing integrated forms of water management. Integrated water management in case of river basin areas may comprise inter alia: (1) increasing...

What is a 'sustainable nation’ and how can we identify and rank ‘sustainable nations’? Are nations producing and consuming in a sustainable way? Aggregate indicators have been proposed to answer these questions. This paper quantitatively compares three aggregate indicators of...

The formation of social ties is examined in an experimental study of voluntary public good provision. The experiment consists of three parts. In the first part the value orientation (attitude to a generalized other) is measured. In the second part couples play 25 periods of a public good game....

We provide an explanation why centralisation of political decision making

Civil servants have a reputation for being lazy. However, people's personal experiences with civil servants frequently run counter to this stereotype. We develop a model of an economy in which workers differ in laziness and in public service motivation, and characterise optimal incentive...

Today’s global world is characterized not only by a high volume of international trade and foreign investment relative to national income, but also by a changed composition of that trade towards a greater fraction of trade in inputs and capital goods and outsourcing of production.. Emphasized...

In this paper we argue that authorities aid cooperation by means of direct coordination or the enforcement of re-commitment devices such as contract laws.Credible threats of violence allow this role. In a local interaction model, an authority forms if mutually connected individuals with...

We assess whether public sector employees have a stronger inclination to serve others and are more risk averse than employees in the private sector. A unique feature of our study is that we use revealed rather than stated preferences data. Respondents of a large-scale survey were offered a...

This paper studies the equilibrium size of countries. Individuals in small countries have greater influence over the nature of political decision mak- ing while individuals in large countries have the advantage of more public goods and lower tax rates. The model implies that (i) there exists...

We analyze a simple model of local public good provision in a country consisting of a large number of heterogeneous regions, each comprising two districts, a city and a village. When districts remain autonomous and local public goods have positive spillover effects on the neighbouring district,...