This paper summarizes previous results on the productivity of public capital. In recent literature, Aschauer's (1989) estimate for the productivity of public capital is often considered too high and the size of the effect is still open to debate. However, the positive effect of public capital on...

This paper provides new evidence for the empirical literature that investigates the presence of political cycles in fiscal policy and, more precisely, public investments in Brazil. The approach differs from most of the studies for applying the state-space modeling. The greatest benefit is to...

Firms' investment decisions involve analyzing prices, products, technologies, productive capacity and the availability of credit. These and other factors were greatly impacted by the 2009 post-crisis economic environment in Brazil. We measure the after crisis impacts of subsidized credit on the...

There is still hardly any empirical evidence on how divergent broadband technologies, and, by extension, bandwidth levels, influence GDP growth, or on the extent of spatial externalities at a regional level. Our study aims to assess the economic benefits of high-speed broadband networks within...

Independent and high-quality evaluations of government policies are an important input for designing evidence-based policy. Lack of incentives and institutions to write such evaluations, on the other hand, carry the risk of turning the system into a costly beauty contest. We study one of the...

We construct a dynamic model of two-sided sorting in labor markets with multi-dimensional agent and firm heterogeneity. We apply it to study optimal party structure and the decision of how (de)centralized candidate recruitment should be. Parties are non-unitary actors and compete at the local...

We analyze the duration of the patent examination process at the EuropeanPatent Office (EPO). Our data contain information related to the patent’seconomic and technical relevance, EPO capacity and workload as well as novelcitation measures which are derived from the EPO’s search reports. In...

Recent empirical studies suggest that poor public sector performance in developing nations is due in part to the difficultly of selecting workers whose motivation is aligned with the mission of the institution -- in direct contrast to evidence from developed nations, public sector workers tend...

In this paper, I test the effects of religious norms on the provision of public goods. My evidence is drawn from public goods experiments that I ran with regional bureaucrats in Tomsk and Novosibirsk, Russia. I introduce three treatments, which I define as degrees of Eastern Orthodox...

State capacity is optimized when public institutions are staffed by individuals with public-service motivation. However, when motivated agents value the collective reputation of their place of employment, steady-state equilibria with both high and low aggregate motivation (reputation) in the...