Decentralizing the allocation of public goods by giving funds directly to communities takes advantage of local information concerning needs, but decreases the accountability over how funds are used; leaving funds open to misuse or capture by local elites. In Indonesia, the World Bank attempts to...

The purpose of this paper is to explore the notion of economic informality and its application in the rural context of developing and transitional economies, applying Keith Hart's (1987) notion of informality as a 'remedial concept'. Some remedy is needed to make sense of the many 'palpable...

This paper studies the role of governments and its link to trust. We argue that the public's trust strongly depends on governments delivering on their core tasks in a market economy. In some economies, a neglect of core tasks can be observed and there seems to be some erosion, notably in terms...

This paper studies the equilibrium size of countries. Individuals in smallcountries have greater influence over the nature of political decision mak-ing while individuals in large countries have the advantage of more publicgoods and lower tax rates. The model implies that (i) there exists...

This paper studies the equilibrium size of countries. Individuals in small countries have greater influence over the nature of political decision making while individuals in large countries have the advantage of more public goods and lower tax rates. The model implies that (i) there exists...

This study considers the performance of countries at the Olympic Games as a public good and investigates different welfare optimal distributions of Olympic success. Firstly, it is argued that, at the national level, Olympic success (measured as the number of gold medals won) meets the two key...

Most of the literature on government intervention in models where public goods are provided through voluntary contributions focuses on interventions that change the total level of a public good, which is known to be (almost always) underprovided relative to the "efficient" level. However,...

We analyze a general equilibrium model of a completely decentralized pure public good economy. Competitive firms using private goods as inputs produce the public good, which is privately provided by households. Previous studies on private provision of public goods typically use one private good,...

We provide a comprehensive survey of the recent literature on the link between productive government expenditure and economic growth. Starting with the seminal paper of Robert Barro (1990) we show that an understanding of the core results of the ensuing contributions can be gained from the study...

When deciding on the social desirability of public investment, the cost of a project is sometimes adjusted by a factor known as the Marginal Cost of Public Funds (MCPF) which captures the cost of raising public funds through distortionary taxation. However, there is no scholarly consensus on...