This paper addresses two basic issues related to technological innovation and climate stabilisation objectives: i) Can innovation policies be effective in stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations? ii) To what extent can innovation policies complement carbon pricing (taxes or permit trading) and...

We employ bootstrap methods (Efron (1979)) to test the effect of an important electoral reform implemented in Italy from 1993 to 2001, that moved the system for electing the Par-liament from purely proportional to plurality rule (for 75% of the seats). We do not find any effect on either the...

Die Präzision ökonomischer Prognosen und die Qualität politischer Handlungsempfehlungen hängen in entscheidendem Ausmaß von der Qualität des zugrunde liegenden Verhaltensmodells ab. Nur ein empirisch gut fundiertes Modell ökonomischen Handelns erlaubt es, die Konsequenzen politischer...

Governments throughout the world are requiring greater use of economic analysis as a way of informing key policy decisions. The European Union now requires that an impact assessment be done for all major policy initiatives. An evaluation of the EU system could provide lessons for the U.S. and...

Whether the U.S. government should be allowed to claim credit for the private philanthropy of its citizens is a hot topic in today's foreign aid debate. Overlooked in this debate, however, is a form of aid that straddles the traditional public/private divide: charitable tax expenditures. Through...

The large economic costs of full-blown lockdowns in response to COVID-19 outbreaks, coupled with heterogeneous mortality rates across age groups, led to question non-discriminatory containment measures. In this paper we provide an assessment of the targeted approach to containment. We propose a...