The United States has the most expensive maternal and infant care system in the world, yet it also has the highest rate of maternal and infant mortality of any wealthy country. This paradox is a direct result of the economics of birth care. The piecemeal nature of services paid for by insurance,...

This paper describes a randomized field experiment testing the impact of a savings competition on the behavior of homeless individuals staying at a transitional shelter. When monetary prizes were offered for achieving the highest saving rates within a particular month, average savings increased...

Chapters 1 and 2 of this report deal with the evolution of the media and contents sector towards a digital world, documenting the evolution of the strategy of the legacy players from a defensive behaviour to a more proactive one, striking deals with new entrants, creating new products online....

Quangos and public entrepreneurship are closely related. The economic theory of quangos allows us to develop a quango theory and highlight the effects of public entrepreneurship. By considering principal agent relations we show how public entrepreneurship of government and quango influence each...

Using administrative tax records for UK businesses, we document both bunching in annual turnover below the VAT registration threshold and persistent voluntary registration by almost half of the firms below the threshold. We develop a conceptual framework that can simultaneously explain these two...

The influence of politics on economic policy is not fully understood. The challenge to ensure political inclusiveness and economic prosperity remains. Perhaps, one way to attain this objective is by increasing political competition. This paper gathers empirical evidence from Pakistan, a country...

Applications such as iMessage, KakaoTalk, LINE, Signal, Skype, Snapchat, Threema, Viber, WhatsApp and WeChat have become an increasingly popular means of personal and business interaction. Surprisingly little academic effort has gone into understanding the nature and origin of these...

We study effects on prices and quantities of a takeover in the rather concentrated German interurban bus industry. We empirically asses the effect of the takeover of Postbus by Flixbus on industry key features, using a route-level price data set containing prices for more than 6,000 routes in...

This paper analyses how different types of access regulation to next generation networks affect investments and consumer welfare. The model consists of an investment stage with uncertain returns and subsequent quantity competition. The access price is a function of investment costs and the...

The interplay of infrastructure supply and demand is of central interest in line with Web 2.0. As the role of customers turns from a service users’ role to an information providers’ role, the traffic on existing lines increases and, simultaneously, customers’ demand for high-quality...