It is well recognised that the issue of the social rate of discount applies only to the gains from public investment that accrues to the public sector. When it comes to measurement, however, there is a problem: public investment in infrastructure and the like do not usually yield direct...

The last decade has seen the burgeoning of several hundred local community currency institutions in cities across the world. Although residents of these communities claim that local currency promotes local development, how if at all it does so has hitherto been unexplored. This paper argues that...

In a public good economy the distribution of initial income is an important determinant of how many individuals contribute to the public good. For the case when all individuals have identical preferences in this paper a simple formula is derived that describes the proportion of all income...

I study a model of geopolitical organization endogenizing the size of nations, of their public spending and of their degree of openness. The optimal geography may not be a stable equilibrium and the Alesina-Spolaore bias toward too many nations tends to be confirmed. However, multiple equilibria...

It has turned out to be difficult to adjust welfare-state arrangements to new circumstances. This paper emphasizes developments in the labor market and changes in the structure and preferences of the family. The former include changes in demography, productivity growth and international linkages...

The US decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and the recent outcomes of the Bonn and Marrakech Conferences of the Parties drastically reduces the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol in controlling GHG emissions. The reason is not only the reduced emission abatement in the US, but also the...

The recent process of political and economic transformation in eastern European countries has not only contributed to the decentralisation of political structure but also significantly enhanced the fiscal autonomy of municipalities in these countries. In this context many similar types of public...

This paper elaborates on the recent race to sequence the human genome. Starting from the debate on public vs. private research arising from the genome case, the paper shows that in some fundamental research areas, where knowledge externalities play an important role, market and non-market...

The paper shows that a comparison of the appropriately-weighted sum of households marginal willingness to pay for a public good with the net effect of the increased supply of the public good on shadow, as distinct from actual, government revenue is a generally valid rule for public good...