Local governments can provide services with their own employees or by contracting with private or public sector providers. We develop a model of this quot;make-or-buyquot; choice that highlights the trade-off between productive efficiency and the costs of contract administration. We construct a...

This paper examines the effects of a proportional capital gains tax in an economy with an Austrian sector (with wine and trees) and an ordinary sector. We analyze the effect of capital gains taxation (on both an accrual and a realization basis) on the efficiency with which resources are used...

We develop a model where labor market structure affects the division of surplus between firms and workers. Using Austrian data we show that in more concentrated labor markets, workers are more likely to return to past employers. In our model, the possibility of these re-encounters endows firms...

Do family policies reduce gender inequality in the labor market? We contribute to this debate by investigating the joint impact of parental leave and child care, using administrative data covering the labor market and birth histories of Austrian workers over more than half a century. We start by...

The Austrian theory of the "marginal use" is restated and extended. It is found that the Austrian concept of marginal utility (as derived from the marginal use) is not dependent on cardinal utility, and indeed is consistent with "intrinsically ordinal" utility. In this system, diminishing...