Amalgamation incentivizes municipalities to increase public debt because it allows them to subrogate their repayment and interest burden on the entire municipality after amalgamation. Especially, the smaller municipality tends to accumulate public debt in order to free-ride. Previous literature...

Recognising the increased demand for agricultural land, this comparative analysis examines the effect of large-scale land acquisitions on their surrounding institutional environment. An embedded case study design allows us to analyse two specific land deals in Ghana and Kenya. We find that...

Amalgamation offers municipalities an incentive to free ride when they can subrogate the load to a new municipality after amalgamation. Previous literature has clarified opportunistic behavior in local public bond issues. However, if the municipality does not have a leeway in policy decision...

This study considers the factors behind municipality amalgamations in Japan from fiscal year 1999 to 2005 using event history analysis. We use discrete-time logit model and 21,165 parson-year data. Our findings show that the central government's carrot and stick policy strongly influenced...

This paper provides a theoretic model for the analysis of cartel formation in an industry that is subject to profit shocks. The competitive or collusive conduct of a firm is determined by a decision maker who maximizes the present value of utility that accrues to him by earning a share of the...

This paper uses survival analysis to examine the time taken to carry out municipality amalgamation in Japan in terms of both forming the amalgamation committee and completing amalgamation. The results show that municipalities that depend on local allocation tax grants as a revenue source, those...

Sugden (2000) offers an answer to the question of how unrealistic models can be used to explain real-world phenomena: by considering a set of unrealistic models, one may conclude that a result common to these models also holds for a realistic model that, however, is too complex to be analyzed,...

This paper studies how the existence of a minority culture influences the well-being of the native population and its attitude towards immigrants. In this context, I assume that multicultural interaction can be advantageous for immigrants and natives if intercultural obstacles and communication...

Performance budgeting schemes in the public sector have to operate with imperfect performance measures. We argue that these imperfections lead to wasteful fund-seeking (window dressing and lobbying) by the administrative units that produce public services. We develop a game-theoretical model to...

Megacities already account for a major part of global energy-related CO2 emissions with a strong tendency to increase; hence, future climate policy has to put a special emphasis on reducing big cities' energy consumption, especially in a world, where global climate negotiations are deadlocked....