Seit Jahrzehnten fusionieren westliche Industrienationen kommunale Gebietskörperschaften in der Hoffnung auf Kosteneinsparungen, eine höhere Leistungsfähigkeit der Verwaltung sowie lokale Wachstumsimpulse. Verlässliche wissenschaftliche Evidenz zu Gebietsreformen ist jedoch erst seit wenigen...

The paper compares the policy choices regarding risk-transfer against low-probability-high-loss events between elected and appointed public officials. Empirical evidence using data on U.S. municipality-level shows that appointed city managers are more likely to adopt federal risk-transfer...

Cities are not affected by global climate policy and the Kyoto Protocol – however many of them engage in voluntary activities. This paper analyses how communities in general and especially the city of Hamburg can contribute to global climate protection in their citypartnerships according to...

The Lembaga Perkreditan Desa (LPD) in Bali are the most recent form of local finance in Indonesia. Their establishment was initiated by the provincial government of Bali after several studies on local financial institutions in Indonesia had been presented at a seminar carried out by the Ministry...

The interventionist rationale of economic policy-making in Indonesia was already laid down in the 1945 constitution, but only the abundant oil revenues during the oil boom period between 1973 and 1982 enabled the government to realize the envisaged state-led model of development. In order to...

This paper examines the topic of unbundled access to the local loop in areas which show characteristics of non-contestable natural monopolies outside the large cities. Under the heading "local loop unbundling" three variants are discussed, full unbundling, line sharing, and bitstream access. An...

In this paper we investigate whether local governments react on the welfare benefit levels in neighboring jurisdictions when setting their own benefit levels. We solve the simultaneity problem arising from the welfare game by utilizing a policy intervention; more specifically, we use a centrally...

Community based health insurance is an emerging and promising concept that has attracted the attention of policy makers as it addresses health care challenges faced by the poor. This paper discusses solutions to important incentive problems in micro-health insurance schemes which threaten their...

In 1996 the Tanzanian government initiated community health insurance schemes to improve the access to health care and to protect people against the financial cost of illness in an environment with shrinking budgets for the health sector. This study aims to evaluate the role of the community...