This paper deals with the funding of cultural activities, describing and analyzing the arguments that justify the State's participation in this funding. It analyzes the critics who claim to have been the cultural policies in Brazil left to the market due to the primacy of tax incentives, part of...

We analyze the consequences of activism in a regulated industry where the regulator has been captured by the industry. Unlike ordinary economic agents, activists are insensitive to monetary incentives. Moreover, they are less well informed than regulators and their actions generate dead-weight...

Activist NGOs increasingly oppose industrial projects that have nevertheless been approved by public regulators. To understand this recent rise in NGO activism, we develop a theory of optimal regulation in which a regulated industry seeks to undertake a project that may be harmful to society. On...

Activist NGOs increasingly oppose industrial projects that were approved by public regulators. We develop a model that explains this phenomenon. We consider a potentially-harmful industrial project that is subject to regulatory approval. The regulator can be influenced by the industry, and may...

With the goal of reducing the dependency on oil revenues, the Government of Kazakhstan has recently increased its budget allocations to prop up the domestic agricultural sector. Yet, many observers agree that it is less the amount of public spending that induces long-term growth than the quality...