We study fiscal spending by supranational unions, where participation is voluntary and countries bargain over contributions to and the allocation of a central budget. We establish and explore the link between the budget's allocation and nations' contributions that occurs since bargaining power...

Do mandatory spending programs such as Medicare improve efficiency? We analyze a model with two parties allocating a fixed budget to a public good and private transfers each period over an infinite horizon. We compare two institutions that differ in whether public good spending is discretionary...

Do mandatory spending programs such as Medicare improve efficiency? We analyze a model with two parties allocating a fixed budget to a public good and private transfers each period over an infinite horizon. We compare two institutions that differ in whether public good spending is discretionary...

Traditionally, economists make a sharp distinction between stated and revealed preferences, viewing the latter as more fully meeting the assumptions of economic analysis. Here, we consider one form of empirical evidence regarding this belief: the consistency of choices in stated and revealed...

In November 2005, 55.7 percent of 2 million Swiss voters approved a 5-year moratorium (ban) on the commercial cultivation of genetically modified (GM) plants within Switzerland. The present study examines how individual voting decisions were determined by (i) socioeconomic characteristics, (ii)...

We introduce reward money into the provision point mechanism with refunds. Reward money is distributed among the contributors in proportion to their contributions only when the provision point is not reached. In environments without aggregate uncertainty, the provision point is always reached in...

A dynamic process underlying firms' discrete financial choices has previously been found, but without controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, this dependence can either be of a true nature or an effect of firm-specific characteristics that we cannot observe. This study extends previous...

This paper analyses the role of banks in financing SMEs in Britain and Germany. It applies a sociological institutionalist approach to understand how banks construct and manage risk, relating to SME business. The empirical analysis is based on the results of a comparative survey of a sample of...