A major contribution of the public-choice school is the recognition by Gordon Tullock that contestable rents give rise to social losses because of unproductive resource use. Contestable rents usually are politically assigned privileges. Contestable rents can also be found outside of government...

The core emphasis of rules-based fiscal legislation at the subnational level in India is to achieve debt sustainability through a numerical ceiling on borrowing and the use of borrowed resources for public capital investment by phasing out revenue deficits. Using the Arellano Bond Panel...

We discuss important features and pitfalls of panel-data event study designs. We derive the following main results: First, event study designs and distributed-lag models are numerically identical leading to the same parameter estimates after correct reparametrization. Second, binning of effect...

In recent decades, economic growth in countries around the world has become increasingly dependent on the dynamism of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This is especially important in the transition economies. The creation of a new SME sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) as a...

We consider a test of expressive voting developed by Brennan and Lomasky (1993). They point out that in presidential elections the probability of a tie, and casting a decisive vote, increases 'multi-billionfold' as the election becomes increasingly close. They conjecture that if voters are...

This paper is assessing the status of e-government development in Europe in comparison with other regions of the world by analyzing evolution trends and making correlations between the financial crisis and the fluctuations registered in the indexes that are measuring e-government development....

Both concepts, integrity and public integrity, are always asked qualities in the social and economic environment, but they are never well defined. In this context, finding precise definitions and offering an ample explanation of the concepts are desired and useful for both economic theoretical...

We discuss important features and pitfalls of panel-data event study designs. We derive the following main results: First, event study designs and distributed-lag models are numerically identical leading to the same parameter estimates after correct reparametrization. Second, binning of effect...

The controversy about sovereign debt cuts loomed prominently throughout crisis in the European Union (EU), as the EU legal rules were viewed to impose strict limitations on debt restructuring involving public creditors due to moral hazard concerns enshrined in the legal ban on bailouts. This...

We present a theory of identity politics that builds on two ideas. First, voters identify with the social group whose interests are closest to theirs and that features the strongest policy conflict with outgroups. Second, identification causes voters to slant their beliefs of self and others...