The need to balance austerity with growth policies has put government efficiency high on the economic policy agenda in Europe. Administrative reforms which boost the efficiency of the administration can alleviate the trade-off between consolidation and public service provision. Against such...

We evaluate the impact of a major European state aid program for broadband deployment applied to rural areas in the German State of Bavaria in the years 2010 and 2011. Using difference-in-differences estimation strategies, we find that aided municipalities have - depending on broadband quality -...

Arbitrarily designed borders have been identified by a recent literature as an important reason why sub-Saharan Africa remains one of the poorest regions on the globe. Accordingly, border changes may be a way to promote growth on the African continent. In this paper, we study the effect of...

I study the problem of allocating objects among agents without using money. Agents can receive several objects and have dichotomous preferences, meaning that they either consider objects to be acceptable or not. In this set-up, the egalitarian solution is more appealing than the competitive...

We estimate the causal impact of restructuring aid granted by the European Commission between 2003 and 2012 on the survival and financial viability of aided firms. Using a comprehensive dataset we find that restructuring aid increases a firm's average survival time by 8 to 15 years and decreases...

This paper studies whether political budget cycles occur in public procurement in the European Union. Using project- level data from Tenders Electronic Daily (2008-2018), I analyze different steps along the procurement process, namely the publication of the contract notice, the awarding of the...

We present a simple model, illustrating how democracy may improve the quality of the economic institutions. The model further suggests that institutional quality varies more across autocracies than across democracy and that the positive effect of democracies on economic institutional quality...

This paper studies the existence of election cycles in public procurement in the European Union for the national level. We analyze different steps along the procurement process, namely the publication of the contract notice, the awarding of the contract, and the project completion. We point out...

How should students be assigned to schools? Two mechanisms have been suggested and implemented around the world: deferred acceptance (DA) and top trading cycles (TTC). These two mechanisms are widely considered excellent choices because they are strategy-proof, in addition to DA's no justified...

A key issue in strategic management in the public sector is how government creates economic and social value through procurement. Unfortunately, most procurement studies are based on contract theories, which fail to incorporate the growing role of strategic management in performance. We fill...