The German Monetary Union of 1990 resulted in government income-transfer policies that had two opposing effects on the work incentives of East Germans. We model the outcome of the political process as one in which the government is concerned with both income growth and current levels of...

While there is an extensive literature on tax evasion a further aspect of cheating on the state, namely benefit fraud, has gained relatively modest attention in the economic literature. This paper seeks to fill this gap. We explore differences between benefit fraud and tax evasion due to...

By introducing the government's preference for tax revenues into an extended game with observable delay, this study provides new insight into the trade-off between the government and the public firm's payoff in a government's optimal policy of privatization. The results show that: (i) regardless...

We estimate the role of private investments in irrigation in farm productivity growth in West Bengal, India between 1982 and 95. Using a state-wide farm panel, we find that falling groundwater costs generated significant growth in value added per acre for farms. These resulted from investments...

It is already a well known fact that public-private partnerships (PPPs) are considered to be a solution for world wide governments facing insufficient public budgets. In the context of the current economic crisis, many voices promote public-private part

We analyze how the deep current scientific uncertainty regarding future climate conditions affects the design of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) contracts between a government (principal) and a firm (agent), especially in infrastructure sectors that are highly sensitive to such changing...

The analysis investigates the relationship between universities, public research institutes and innovation in companies belonging to the green economy. By adopting a ‘general to specific’ specification strategy ‘a la Hendry’, the analysis sheds light on previously unexplored determinants...

The scope of public human resource policy is outlined. Motivation for the need of transparency in this policy is provided in terms of informational asymmetries, human capital externalities, and long planning horizons. Transparency is defined both along a time dimension – ex ante and ex post...

In this paper we focus on an adverse effect of extensive choice widely known as ‘choice overload’. We draw on the case of Swedish funded pensions for illustration and analyze consequences of the design that allowed for maximizing the choice set. The analysis shows limitations of employing...

The Urban Heat Island (UHI) provides direct evidence of how human activities contribute to a feedback loop that can result in multiple changes in ecosystem services by creating localized warming as well as differences in vegetated landscapes in areas surrounding the urban core. This paper...