In actual environmental policy, the design of actual pollution emission taxes differs significantly with the optimal Pigovian tax. In particular, earmarking prevails and actual taxes are usually combined with regulation. Furthermore tax rates are generally too low to significantly influence...

Given heterogeneity in incomes and health risks, with asymmetric information in the latter, preferences over the public-private mix in health insurance and care are derived. Results concerning crowding-out in the presence of adverse selection are established. For low-risk individuals,...

We analyze the factors that influence the support for environmental policy proposals. Swiss referendum data show that proposals obtain more yes-votes if they do not restrict consumption possibilities directly, if they are endorsed by the largest business association, if environmental preferences...

The impact of political institutions, e.g. the organization of legislature, election and party systems, on agricultural protection has hardly been taken into account explicitly in theoretical and empirical studies, yet. In this framework the paper investigates to what extent political...

Four types of economics" relevant for institutional analysis are distinguished: Standard Neoclassical Economics; Socio-Economics or Social Economics; New Institutional Economics; and Psychological Economics (often misleadingly called Behavioural Economics). The paper argues that an extension of...

The paper aims at a conceptual contribution to the normative economic analysis of rural de-velopment (RD) policies. RD is regarded as a problem of interaction between individuals; (lacking) structural change or the (missing) integration of externalities are therefore recon-structed as...

Dieses Interview wurde für eine Fachzeitschrift geführt, die sich primär an Lehrer wendet, welche in der Schule die Fächer „Politik“ oder „Wirtschaft“ unterrichten. Die Fragen und Antworten versuchen, verständlich werden zu lassen, wie wichtig es gerade für Schüler ist, die...

This paper studies the consequences of certain widespread policies for the quality and sustainability of growth. These policies cause economic inefficiency, environmental destruction and increased poverty. The paper develops a political economy model to show why the existence of such policies is...

This volume was prepared by Susanne Link during her stay at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and the Department of Human Capital and Innovation of the Ifo Institute of Economic Research. It was accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Economics Departure of the University of Munich in...