It can be argued that just as there are different kinds of literacy, there are different kinds of illiteracy. A proximate illiterate, i.e. an illiterate who has easy access to a literate person, is clearly better off than someone without such access. The existing literature that takes account of...

Angesichts steigender Gesundheitsausgaben spielen Gesundheitssystemvergleiche in den letzten Jahren eine immer größere Rolle. Solche "Benchmarks" können sinnvolle Anregungen zur Verbesserung von Gesundheitssystemen darstellen. Viele Gesundheitssystemvergleiche unterstellen implizit ein...

In times of ever-rising health expenditures it is becoming more and more obvious that conventional models for funding health care are increasingly experiencing difficulties in meeting up this challenge. The concept of Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) represents an innovative and so far rarely...

Das Konzept der Medical Savings Accounts als Instrument zur Finanzierung von Gesundheitssystemen hat in den letzten Jahren international Aufmerksamkeit erregt. In Deutschland wurde ein ähnliches Konzept für die Gesetzliche Rentenversicherung im Rahmen der "Riester Rente" diskutiert. Länder...

This paper examines whether the federal structure of aid-receiving countries matters in explaining aid effectiveness. Following the decentralization theorem, the devolution of powers should increase aid effectiveness, since local decision-makers are better informed about local needs. At the same...

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model of education, quality and variety innovation, and scale-invariant growth. The early endogenous innovation-based growth models incorporate a scale e?ect predicting that larger economies are characterized by higher per capita growth rates. Recent...

This paper empirically studies the impact of decentralization and inter-jurisdictional competition on foreign aid effectiveness. For this purpose we examine a commonly used empirical growth model, considering different measures of fiscal decentralization. Our panel estimations reveal that...

Assessing the trade impacts of domestic transport costs is data demanding and analyses that examine the effects of road quality, a critical aspect in regional and public policy, practically do not exist in the international trade literature. The few studies available rely mostly on distancebased...

School-based management programs aim to improve education outcomes by involving parents in allocation decisions about external funds transferred to the school. This paper explores the effects of two school-based management programs on parental investment in schools via voluntary contributions....

We are interested in three related questions: (1) How should accounting prices be estimated? (2) How should we evaluate policy change in an imperfect economy? (3) How can we check whether intergenerational well-being will be sustained along a projected economic programme? We do not presume that...