Theory and evidence point towards particularly positive effects of high-quality child care for disadvantaged children. At the same time, disadvantaged families often sort out of existing programs. To counter differences in learning outcomes between children from different socioeconomic...

In a range of settings, private firms manage peer effects by sorting agents into different groups, be they schools, communities, or product categories. This paper considers such a firm, which controls group entry by setting a series of anonymous prices. We show that private provision...

Both crime and terrorism impose costs onto society through the channels of fear and worry. Identifying and targeting groups which are especially affected by worries might be one way to reduce the total costs of these two types of insecurity. However, compared to the drivers of the fear of crime,...

Wäre der Entscheidungsprozess zu Stuttgart 21 (S21) anders verlaufen, wenn es in Baden-Württemberg wirksame Mittel direkt-demokratischer Mitbestimmung gegeben hätte? Ziel dieses Beitrag ist es, Grenzen und Möglichkeiten direkt-demokratischer Verfahren am Beispiel des Großprojekts S21...

In this paper we analyse public sector efficiency in the new member states of the European Union compared to that in emerging markets. After a conceptual discussion of expenditure efficiency measurement issues, we compute efficiency scores and rankings by applying a range of measurement...

In this paper we examine the impact of public spending, education, and institutions on income distribution in advanced economies. We also assess the efficiency of public spending in redistributing income by using a DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) nonparametric approach. We find that public...

Questions of burden sharing receive increasing attention in the climate change regime. This paper introduces the WESA-mechanism (WESA = Walrasian Equilibrium with the Stand Alone upper bound) for the fair division of common property resources and monetary compensations. Furthermore, the...

Most currently employed Integrated Assessment Models are of a dynastic nature, commonly assuming a fixed relation between pure time preference, economic growth and interest rate. This rigid relation has led to much debate on which level of discounting to adopt. Especially the quantitative...

A method is presented for computing long-term greenhouse gas emission pathways for both industrial ("Annex B") countries and developing ("non-Annex B") countries. This method combines two main factors: (i) climate protection goals, in the form of targets for stabilising CO2 in the atmosphere,...

This paper considers the problem of how a government, having decided to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, identifies the policy or mix of policies that achieves this reduction at the lowest possible net economic cost. This involves accounting for the fact that each potential policy for reducing...