A simple Tiebout model is presented where states provide university education to both immobile and mobile students. State governments choose the quality of public universities by trading off the value of education for the local immobile student population and the costs, net of tuition revenues,...

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...

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...

This paper challenges the assertion that European politics would be closer to the citizens' preferences if decision power were transferred from the Council of Ministers to the European Parliament. On the one hand, citizens benefit from a greater transparency in the Parliamentś debates compared...

A model where a portion of the population participates in illegal activities is developed. The propensity to participate in crimes depends on the probability and the opportunity cost of beingarrested. The government can influence these variables by law enforcement expenditures and by social...

Es wird ein Modell präsentiert, in dem ein Teil der Bevölkerung straffällig wird.Die Neigung zur Kriminalität hängt von der Wahrscheinlichkeit ab, entdeckt zuwerden, sowie von den Opportunitätskosten, falls man entdeckt wird. Der Staatkann diese Variablen durch Strafverfolgungsmaßnahmen...

We use a stylized model to show that, if transfers to the poor arefounded on a security argument, there is a negative trade-off betweenlaw enforcement expenditures and criminality. In contrast, if transfersare based on altruism, the correlation between the same variables mayappear positive. We...