Given the intensive and ideologically charged debate over the use of private contractors for publicly funded services, it is somewhat surprising that many social scientists have preferred to explain government outsourcing by the pursuit of economic efficiency. Starting out from different...

This article analyses how the presence of a dominant group of voters within the electorate affects voter turnout. Theoretically, we argue that both the absolute size and the relative power of a dominant group influence voters' decision-making process. The former effect derives from increased...

We test whether generosity is related to political preferences and partisanship in Canada, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States using incentivized dictator games. The total sample consists of more than 5,000 respondents. We document that support for social spending and redistribution...

Some politicians argue for the splitting and combining of states to increase government productivity, but there is a dearth of empirical evidence on the optimal size of a state. Using data from Indian states, I test a model of the optimal size of the state. I find that size and preference...

This text is the result of the technical working group from the Department of Housing, Regularization and Urban Development of the Federal District (SEDHAB). It is also a product of the research "Urban, legal and tributary instruments for urban development"- an analysis of its implantation in...

Which impact does government size have on life satisfaction, and how do effects of bigger government differ between income groups in society? Previous studies typically employed country averages and thus neglect possibly heterogeneous happiness effects between income groups. The paper addresses...

I develop a model of public sector contracting based on the multitask framework by Holmström and Milgrom (1991). In this model, an agent can put effort into increasing the quality of a service or reducing costs. Being residual claimants, private owners have stronger incentives to cut costs than...

This article outlines a possible analytical framework employing recent and relevant World Trade Organization (“WTO”) jurisprudence for evaluating whether technical regulations such as the European Union's (“EU's”) European Community's (“EC's”) regulatory regime for the Registration,...

The objective of this paper is to explore various relationships between self-reported life satisfaction and state public finance in the U.S. The paper focuses on both government expenditure and revenue (especially tax) structures. This paper is the first of its kind to examine the relationship...