Government agencies typically have a certain freedom to choose among different possible courses of action. This paper studies agency decision-making on priorities in a principal-agent framework with multi-tasking. The agency head (the principal) has discretion over part of the agency's budget to...

We study two aspects of globalization. It allows a decision-maker to go beyond his own local experience and to learn from other decision-makers in addressing common problems. This improves the identification and diffusion of best practices. It also provides extra information to `markets' that...

We explore how public opinion polls affect candidates' campaign spending in political competition. Generally, polls lead to (more) asymmetric behavior. Under a majority rule there always exists an equilibrium in which the initially more popular candidate invests more in the campaign and thereby...

We study two aspects of globalization. It allows a decision-maker to go beyond his own local experience and to learn from other decision-makers in addressing common problems. This improves the identification and diffusion of best practices. It also provides extra information to 'markets' that...

Goods are often allocated publically by means of queuing processes in developing countries.In such situations, which group of citizens should a corrupt government official favor? In addition,what should be the basis for this favoritism? To the best of our knowledge, these salient questionshave...

Although the literature on the effectiveness of child care centers in developing countries is thin, most of the studies have concluded that the provision of these services are beneficial to enhance the development of poor children at early ages. Using different matching techniques, the results...

Using a discontinuity in the funding scheme, we evaluate the impact of home visitsand child care centers on poor children and mothers in Ecuador. We find thathome visits are beneficial for children's cognitive outcomes and health and for mothers'psychological well-being but reduce mothers' labor...

Over the period 2005-2009 the Dutch government increased childcare subsidies substantially, reducing the average effective parental fee by 50%, and extended subsidies to so-called guestparent care. We estimate the labour supply effect of this reform with a difference-in-differences strategy,...

Field-experimental studies have shown that people litter more in more littered environments.Inspired by these findings, many cities around the world have adopted policies to quickly remove litter. While such policies may avoid that people follow the bad example of litterers,they may also invite...

Outsourcing of detention is a complex public task, due to quality risks from incomplete contracts, the public responsibility for sentencing and execution, and related social opinions. In the Netherlands, the debate about the outsourcing of prison services to the private profit sector has...