We find that lottery tax windfalls finance higher state-government expenditures on supplemental security income that increase consumption, but only during bust periods. Wealth transfers from lottery winners to low income households enable fiscal policy to stabilize consumption during bust periods.

I use a spatial Durbin model to estimate the effects of taxes on state economic growth. Results indicate that taxes have negative short-run and long-run own-state and spatial spillover effects on state growth.

We match individual senators’ voting behavior on legislative proposals with 24 real referendum decisions on exactly the same issues with identical wording. This setting allows us to evaluate the median voter model’s quality with revealed constituents’ preferences. Results indicate a...

We test the effect of an important electoral reform implemented in Italy from 1993 to 2001, that moved the system for electing the Parliament from purely proportional to a plurality rule (for 75% of the seats). We do not find any effect on either the number of parties or the stability of...

Socially destructive behavior in a public good environment–like damaging public goods–is an underexposed phenomenon in economics. In an experiment we investigate whether such behavior can be influenced by the very nature of an environment. To that purpose we use a Fragile Public Good (FPG)...

This paper examines the effects of charter schools on student achievement at neighboring traditional schools. The study shows that charter school entry does not induce indirect impact on non-overlapping grades but generates positive direct impact on overlapping grades. I also demonstrate that...

With nondistortionary user charges, the first best and second best of a single-club-exogenous-income economy with identical individuals coincide. They differ if incomes differ. Overprovision of a superior club good then occurs in the Second Best.

We model a single-club-heterogeneous-consumer-exogeneous-income economy as an aggregative public good game. Under common assumptions, if club quality functions are homogeneous of positive degree in the club facility investment and use, an unique Nash equilibrium exists.

Catholic schools compete with public schools but may also cream-skim. The endogeneity of private school enrollment necessitates 2SLS. Measures of Catholic sex abuse scandals instrument for Catholic school enrollment. We find that competition from Catholic schools raises public school test scores.

Why do some participants in online auctions place their bids right before the time of closing? Using e-Bay data, we propose count-data models to look at both the presence of the late-bidding phenomenon and its intensity. Our results reveal significant differences between extremely late-bidders...