Based on contribution patterns to parties in Germany and elsewhere, we suggest that democracies should use a mixed system where private funding can play a larger role than public funding. In Germany the high level of public funding for parties can be reduced without expecting undesirable effects...

Based on explicit present value calculations, the paper criticizes the view that the PAYGO system wastes economic resources. In present value terms, there is nothi ng to be gained from a transition to a funded system even though the latter offers a permanently higher rate of return. The sum of...

We examine how the legal protection of outside shareholders and the appropriative costs that they induce influence the incentives for private firms to go public. A higher degree of protection of shareholders can increase the appropriative costs associated with the conflict between managers and...

This paper models privatization as a cooperative game between the government, a trade union and the private shareholders. These players kno w that privatization increases the efficiency of a firm, but only the management of the firm knows the exact value of the relevant productivity-increasing...

We present an analysis of the share of public ownership in the product market in the OECD countries from 1974 to 2007. Despite much has been said on the broad topic of reforms and regulation, a sector-specific insight is missing. We replicate the analysis of Galasso (2014) by sector of activity...

This paper examines the consequences of creating a fully competitive market in a sector previously dominated by a cost-minimising public firm. Workers in the economy are heterogeneous in their motivation to work in the sector. In line with empirical findings, our model implies that firms in the...

Recent adoption of competition laws across the globe has highlighted the importance of institutional considerations for antitrust effectiveness and the need for comparative institutional analyses of antitrust that extend beyond matters of substantive law. Contributing to the resulting nascent...

This paper analyses the effects of a pension system privatization in a unionized economy. Using an overlapping-generations framework we show that in an environment characterized by unemployment, a reform towards a private pension system in the steady state may result in lower levels of...