This paper examines the performance of the JTPA performance system, a widely emulated model for inducing efficiency in government organizations. We present a model of how performance incentives may distort bureaucratic decisions. We define cream skimming within the model. Two major empirical...

Making use of restrictions imposed by equilibrium, theoretical progress has been made on the nonparametric and semiparametric estimation and identification of scalar additive hedonic models (Ekeland, Heckman, and Nesheim, 2002) and scalar nonadditive hedonic models (Heckman, Matzkin, and...

This paper considers the identification and estimation of hedonic models. We establish that in an additive version of the hedonic model, technology and preferences are generically identified up to affine transformations from data on demand and supply in a single hedonic market. For a very...

Heterogeneous firm productivity seems to provide an argument for governments to pursue 'pick-the-winner' strategies by subsidizing highly productive firms more, or taxing them less, than their less productive counterparts. We appraise this argument by studying the optimal choice of effective tax...

This paper analyses the development of the ratio of corporate taxes to wage taxes using a simple political economy model with internationally mobile and immobile firms. Among other results, our model predicts that countries reduce their corporate tax rate, relative to the wage tax, either when...

We set up a simple political economy model where economic integration raises the profitability of multinational firms. In this setting redistributive taxation may rise following economic integration, if the effects of the widened income gap dominate the higher excess burden of the tax.