The observed two-part tariff price structure (consisting of a lump-sum price and a linear marginal price) for drinking water in Germany does not reflect the cost structure reported in the literature. Recovering marginal costs from a sample of 251 German counties, we see that there are positive...

This essay concerns the ways in which public services – particularly household services such as communications, energy, water and transportation – have been regulated and deregulated, and analyses what consequences this has for users and citizens. Much of the deregulation of public services...

This study provides an analysis of access to public services of ethnic minority children. The main data sets are from a Baseline Survey of the Program 135-II in 2007, Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys 2004 and 2006, and the 15-percent sample of the Population and Housing Census 2009. It...

What determines the propensity to reduce or widen the extent of public ownership? Why has there been a tendency to privatise and concede public utilities during the nineties? The answers to these questions depend both on macroeconomic and microeconomic considerations. And correct answers could...

The paper approaches the topic of competence transfer in Romanian public administration in view of enlarging the processes of decentralization and deconcentration. The relation between decentralization of administration and competence transfer is biunivoque and it is understood in broad meaning...

Is household income enough for human development or government should heed to direct provision of social services to improve capabilities of individual. The former emphasized by the World Bank and later by the UNDP. This paper tests the argument by estimating a basic need policy model for...

Frequently, the „Japanese miracle” was a subject of discussion. The book „The Strategist Brain Power – The Business Art in Japan”, by Kenichi Ohmae (Japan, 1975) when the business environment was confronted with serious problems. The book brings, also in Romania (1998), a number of...

This paper aims at the balance between the citizen and the public authorities with public services as an interface. Public services place themselves at the crossroads of many elements such as: needs of the citizen, social need, public will, public resources, private availability, and civic...

We exploit differences in casualties sustained in pre-modern wars to estimate the impact of fiscal capacity on economic performance. In the past, states fought different amounts of external conflicts, of various lengths and magnitudes. To raise the revenues to wage wars, states made fiscal...

We examine the long-term links between state capacity and economic performance. Our database is novel and spans 11 countries and 4 centuries in Europe, the birthplace of modern economic growth. A dynamic simultaneous equation panel model indicates that the performance effects of states with...