This paper reviews two recent books on Political Economy by Allan Drazen and Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini. It discusses some problems of the recent Political Economy literature.

This paper aims to provide a swift tour of the economic issues presented by vouchers and thus to fill an apparent gap in the literature for a basic survey of the subject. Among the issues it considers are: factors determining a voucher's cash-equivalence; reasons (such as paternalism,...

In this paper, the relevance of national accounts statistics and their underlying conceptual framework is investigated for their four roles: description and object of analysis, tool for analysis and forecasting, tool for communication and decision-making and input for alternative accounts...

It is well documented that firms develop nonmarket strategies in an effort to shape public policy changes to their advantage. But are there no limits to this? This paper argues that there is, in fact, an important limitation, internal to the firm, that stems from the necessity for firms to...

In this paper we present a model designed to relate the detailed occupational and industrial demands imposed on the economy by several types of water resource investment. This detail provides the basis for adjusting the market cost of such public investments under the employment conditions...

What are "liberal professions"? Their essence, their importance for the person as an individual and as a social act? Who or what do libereal professions challenge if they ask for requirements for the "science"? The questions formulate the confrontation of the self-image of liberal professions...

The essay proposes an alternative understanding of social policy, focussing on social quality and as such bringing together biographical and societal development and as well institutional and communal concerns. On this basis the author proposes a definition of precarity that goes far beyond...

Many claims about political behavior are based on implicit assumptions about human reasoning. One such assumption, that political actors think in complex and similar ways when assessing strategies, is nested within widely used game theoretic equilibrium concepts. Empirical research casts doubt...

In the article, we review recent literature on fiscal sustainability with particular reference to problems that are specific to transition countries. While the original literature on fiscal sustainability is chiefly focused on industrial countries there are by now few works that have focused on...

The main issue of this article is to discuss the question of ‘precarity’ in the context of the theory of social quality (see Beck et al, 2001), with which to pave the way for developing further the theoretical foundation of precarity. Societal practice is the main challenge this concept...