For certain products, consumers' misinformation about quality is more endemic at intermediate levels of the quality spectrum rather than at the top or the bottom levels of quality. Using an oligopoly model of vertical product differentiation with three quality levels - green, natural, and brown...

The production and trade of dairy and poultry products in Canada are controlled by a system of supply management (SM). Output is regulated with production quotas, and imports are restricted through a system of tariff-rate quotas. Many of Canada's trading partners are seeking better access to...

For almost two decades, starting from the early ‘90s, Italy experienced the strongest wave of decentralization reforms in its post II World War history. The causes were both economic and political. Yet, in recent years, again economic and political causes seem to call for opposite reforms....

We use a "natural experiment", the fiscal adjustment of Italy in the 1990s to meet the Maastricht criteria, to test a simple model of soft budget constraint that closely resembles the intergovernmental relationships in the Italian public health care sector. We show that the link between the...