The direct democratic choice of an examination standard, i.e., a performance level required to graduate, is evaluated against a utilitarian welfare function. It is shown that the median preferred standard is inefficiently low if the marginal cost of reaching a higher performance reacts more...

Why, after more than twenty-five years of decentralization, are Philippine local government units (LGUs) at varied levels of development? How does the literature explain this phenomenon? This paper surveys empirical literature on Philippine decentralization with the aim to gather insights as...

IPCC (2022) documents a looming gap between climate goals and implemented policies and points to a lack of political commitment. We study policymakers' incentives to commit. A policymaker decides on a policy to encourage citizens to make investments and determines the degree of flexibility to...