The United States government recently passed legislation and stabilization packages to respond to the COVID-19 (i.e., coronavirus disease 2019) outbreak by providing paid sick leave, tax credits, and free virus testing; expanding food assistance and unemployment benefits; and increasing Medicaid...

This study analyzes the efficiency of the road provision of the local governments of eastern German counties using data envelopment analysis. The provision of roads is a costly public service, which makes an efficiency analysis in this field an interesting subject. I enhance the previous...

With public services such as health and education, it is not straightforward for consumers to assess the quality of provision. Many such services are provided by monopoly not-for-profit providers and there is concern that for-profit providers may increase profit at the expense of quality. This...

We estimate the causal effect of direct elections on the economic performance of politicians. Candidates running in direct elections to head local governments in the German state of Brandenburg need an absolute majority, and votes for the winner must represent at least 15% of eligible voters. If...