Punishment has been shown to be an effective reinforcement mechanism. Intentional or not, punishment will likely generate spillover effects that extend beyond one’s immediate decision environment, and these spillovers are not as well understood. We seek to understand these secondary spillover...

We investigate the effects of urban and rural populations and area sizes on the expenditures of the prefecture-level local government. We found the following three results. The first relates to the expenditure for urban populations. At around 220,000 people, per capita local government...

In the absence of owners, how effective are the constraints imposed by the state in promoting effective firm governance? This paper develops state-level indices of governance environment facing not-for-profits and examines the effects of these rules on not-for-profit behavior. Stronger...

Nonprofit organizations are taxed on the portion of their income that is unrelated to their primary exempt mission. Prior research suggests that nonprofits reallocate expenses from their tax-exempt to their taxable activities in order to reduce their tax liabilities. This paper examines two...

We draw out implications of the identifiable victim effect - the greater sympathy shown toward identifiable than statistical victims - for public finance. We first review research showing (1) that people respond more strongly to identifiable than statistical victims even when identification...

The size of a supermajority required to change an existing contract varies widely in different settings. This paper analyzes the optimal supermajority requirement, determined by multilateral bargaining behind the veil of ignorance. The optimum is determined by a tradeoff between reducing hold-up...

Local public schools must satisfy the electorate to pass tax levies and re-elect school board members. Central cityschools seem to pursue these goals differently than suburban or non-metropolitan schools. While central city schools are associated with low standardized test scores, they also are...