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...

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...

This paper shows the strategic aspects of international outsourcing in an oligopolistic market, if outsourcing is attractive because of fixed cost savings. We show that outsourcing decisions are strategic substitutes. Furthermore, we demonstrate that due to decreasing individual output,...

We study management practices and performance in a representative sample of German municipalities, which provide the bulk of direct administrative services for citizens and firms in Germany. Surveyed municipalities differ substantially in their use of structured management practices, and this...

In this paper, I argue that religion matters for the emergence of democracies and dictatorships. Religion is defined as a stochastically set demand for public goods. Different types of religious collectives reflect different tradeoffs between centralized resource distribution and market rewards....

This paper shows the strategic aspects of international outsourcing in a duopolistic market. Due to different costs of integrated production and outsourcing, the choice of a firm influences the strategy of the competitor via the output price. Therefore, the resulting market constellation depends...

We show that team formation can serve as an implicit commitment device to overcome problems of self-control. If individuals have present-biased preferences, effort that is costly today but rewarded at some later point in time is too low from the perspective of an individual's long-run self. If...

Additive Manufacturing (AM) enables mass customization and has thereby the potential to revolutionize traditional manufacturing. In this paper, we examine how the adoption of AM affects competition and welfare in traditionally standardized product markets. Analyzing a game-theoretical model of...

We present a simple model, illustrating how democracy may improve the quality of the economic institutions. The model further suggests that institutional quality varies more across autocracies than across democracy and that the positive effect of democracies on economic institutional quality...

Covid-19 pandemic has shown how important are public sector capacities and capabilities to react to crises and re-configure existing policies and implementation practices. Prior to the pandemic, policymakers were increasingly turning their attention to challenge-driven innovation policies in...