This paper presents the results of an empirical study of attitudes toward bribe taking in the largest economies on four continents – the USA, Brazil, Germany and China. The authors use the Human Beliefs and Values Survey data to examine several demographic variables, including gender, age,...

Florian Dorn prepared this study during his doctoral studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich (LMU). The study was completed in September 2020 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics. This dissertation contributes to the empirics of public economics and...

This paper addresses the personal linkages between the public administration and the legislature that emerge because public servants pursue a political mandate. There are concerns that the strong representation of bureaucrats in many Western parliaments compromises the constitutionally proposed...

This paper addresses the personal linkages between the public service and the legislature that emerge because public servants pursue a political mandate. There are concerns that the strong representation of public servants in many Western parliaments compromises the constitutionally proposed...

In this paper, we integrate the identity of legislators in a politico-economic analysis of parliamentary oversight whereby oversight activities depend on individual control costs and incentives. We focus on public servants selected into parliament who face a conflict of interests but also have...

Formal and informal institutions are often viewed as complements or substitutes in empirical and theoretical works. However, no evidence of complementarities or substitutes is found in our empirical analysis of the interrelation between formal and informal decentralization across 64 provinces of...

Senior officials in the ministerial bureaucracy are responsible for the coordination of public service activity and their number has grown enormously since World War II. We study the growth in employment of this politically sensitive high-profile occupational group from a political economics...

Panel effects have been widely studied in randomly composed panels. However for many courts, panel composition stays constant. Then judges become familiar with each other. They know what to expect from each other. There is room for mutual trust. A local culture may emerge. If rejection is the...