This paper concerns optimal taxation and public goods in an economic federation with decentralized leadership, where one lower level government is the first mover also in the horizontal dimension. Under plausible assumptions, horizontal leadership reinforces the incentives created by...

Subjects who overestimate their performance in experimental tasks unrelated to travel are less willing to insure against failing in the task and also less inclined to buy travel insurance. This suggests intrinsic optimism influences insurance demand and diminishes adverse selection.

This paper is concerned with the problem of extending an antisymmetric binary relation on a set to a linear order on the power set. A necessary and sufficient condition is offered.

This paper shows that the fragmentation of bilateral donors’ aid across recipient countries tends to raise their transaction costs. It is estimated that bilateral donors could reduce their transaction costs by US$2.5 billion per year through greater recipient country specialisation.

We estimate the effect of Internet on the volume of used car transactions. From 1997 to 2007, Internet use tripled in California, causing an increase in volume-of-trade of 7.2 %. This implies a substantial welfare gain via improved allocative efficiency.

This paper finds evidence that more democratic political institutions increase trust. Second generation immigrants with ancestries from 115 countries are studied within 30 European countries. Comparing individuals born and residing in the same country, those whose father was born in a more...

This paper is the first attempt to study the relationship between public auditor expertise and fiscal performance. I find that states requiring the auditor to hold a professional degree feature significantly higher credit ratings and lower expenditures and debt.

We analyze electorally motivated public spending using disaggregated expenditure data. Election cycles in total expenditures and in specific sub-categories mainly exist in newly democratized Eastern European countries. However, electorally motivated spending policies are ineffective means to...

We give an objective meaning to the concept of taxable capacity and establish a theoretical link between Optimal Taxation Theory (OTT) and the proposals of the Carter and Meade Reports, solving at the same time Kay’s (2008) criticism to both approaches.

Based on the SVAR approach we examine the importance of credit for the transmission of fiscal policy shocks in Greece. Fiscal shocks have more pronounced effects on the output when credit is constrained. Tax burden shocks have the most protracted effects.