During Apartheid, there was little need for redistributional policies or to borrow for public works since the vast majority of the population was underserved. With the arrival of a representative democracy in 1994, however, South Africa faced a unique problem - providing new and improved public...

This paper uses a closed voting rule to explain how gradual changes in the socio-economic structure of developed societies shift political coalitions and lead to rapid expansions of transfer programs. Equilibria in a lifecycle economy with three homogeneous groups of voters (retirees, skilled...

This paper provides a comprehensive study into the economic determinants of transnational terrorism and the role that development plays in fostering a more peaceful world. We analyze models of conflict resolution to investigate the relative importance of economic development on domestic and...

The World Bank sponsored anti-corruption programme in Bolivia seemed like the perfectly designed programme. It promoted participation, involved all of society's stakeholders, and focused on action-planning. Yet, like many other such initiatives, the promise did not live up to the potential - the...

If charity begins at home, scholarship on the charitable deduction has stayed at home. In the vast legal literature, few authors have engaged the distinction between charitable contributions that are meant to be used within the United States and charitable contributions that are meant to be used...

Austria faces significant population aging. This will increase public spending on pensions, health care, and long-term care, while tax and social security revenues will fall. This paper analyzes the fiscal burden facing Austria due to aging and the policy steps necessary to address it. The paper...

The paper argues that assets produced under build-own-operate-transfer (BOOT) schemes under which public infrastructure assets are legally owned and operated for a defined period by the private corporation that constructs them, before being transferred to the government - should be treated in...

Fiscal vulnerability describes a situation where a government is exposed to the possibility of failure to meet its aggregate fiscal policy objectives. The suggested framework for assessing vulnerability highlights four macro-fiscal aspects of vulnerability: incorrect specification of the initial...

In this paper we study the link between elections, fiscal policy and aggregate fluctuations. The set-up is a stylized dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model incorporating both technology and political re-election shocks. The later are incorporated via a two-party model with elections. The...

Measures of institutional quality are strong predictors of cross-country differences in income and productivity. The institutional economics literature has long maintained that one way institutions influence economic growth is by impacting the efficient allocation of production factors across...