Despite their small number, Israeli economists have become an important fixture in the international academic scene. In recent years, this phenomenon has been characterized by an additional attribute: the number of Israelis who have chosen to leave the country’s universities - or not to return...

One of the more important measures of a scholar’s research impact is the number of times that the scholar’s work is cited by other researchers as a source of knowledge. This paper conducts a first of its kind examination on Israel’s academic economists and economics departments, ranking...

This paper provides a comparative examination of how public universities in two countries, the United States and Israel, have evolved over the past few decades - and how differences between the two have culminated in a rate of academic brain drain from the latter to the former that is...

Deterrence of illegal activities is frequently carried out by many atomistic auditors (tax auditors, law enforcement agents, etc.). Not much is known either normatively about the best way to incentivize atomistic auditors, nor positively about what these incentives actually look like in real...

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

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

This paper, a chapter in the forthcoming Oxford University Press Handbook of the Indian Economy, edited by Chetan Ghate, considers India’s experience with fiscal (responsibility) rules during the past decade. After reviewing the basic facts concerning public debt and deficits in India, the...

Tax reform proposals in the spirit of the 'flat tax' model typically aim to reduce three parameters: the average tax burden, the progressivity of the tax schedule, and the complexity of the tax code. We explore the implications of changes in these three parameters on entrepreneurial activity,...

The Stability and Growth Pact has been under fire ever since it was born. But is the Pact a flawed fiscal rule? Against established criteria for an ideal fiscal rule, its design and compliance mechanisms show strengths and weaknesses. The latter tend to reflect trade-offs typical of...

The majority of enterprises in China are controlled by local governments at the provincial, city, county, township and village levels. We study the effect of regional decentralization on soft budget constraints in these enterprises. We show that fiscal competition under (foreign) capital...