Since 1932, when Justice Louis Brandeis remarked that in a federal system states can serve as "laboratories" of democracy, political decentralization has been thought to stimulate policy experimentation. We reexamine the political economy behind this belief, using a simple model of voting in...

This paper provides a firm-level empirical analysis on the ways in which corruption affects innovative activity. Particularly with respect to the African continent that is striving to reconcile with instability and poverty, this issue seems to be of utmost importance. Using a newly available...

Innovation is the major driver of economic growth and development. To analyze innovation processes the restriction of a framework suited to the analysis of innovation towards the industrial sphere of an economy is not sufficient because of the important co-evolutionary dimensions of innovation....

Practitioners and scholars of public administration currently seem to have overcome comprehensive reform strategies and are focusing their attention on minor changes in public administration that generate short-term outcomes with lower transactional costs. In that sense, many have argued that...

We study the link between public enforcement of property rights, innovation investments, and economic growth in an endogenous growth framework with an expanding set of product varieties. We find that a government may assure positive equilibrium growth through public employment in the enforcement...

Innovation is the major driver of economic growth and development. To analyze innovation processes the restriction of a framework suited to the analysis of innovation towards the industrial sphere of an economy is not sufficient because of the important co-evolutionary dimensions of innovation....

Public sector reforms are commonplace in developing countries. Much of the literature about these reforms reflects on their failures. This paper asks about the successes and investigates which of two competing theories best explain why some reforms exhibit such positive deviance. These theories...

The research project WWWforEurope undertakes to lie the theoretical and empirical foundations for the embarkment on a new socio-ecological growth path in Europe. The new path underlines the need to guarantee Welfare as a broad universal principle for its population, assuring economic and social...

We study the link between public enforcement of property rights, innovation investments, and economic growth in an endogenous growth framework with an expanding set of product varieties. We find that a government may assure positive equilibrium growth through public employment in the enforcement...

A government agency wants a facility to be built and managed to provide a public service. Two different modes of provision are considered. In a public-private partnership, the tasks of building and managing are bundled, whereas under traditional procurement, these tasks are delegated to separate...