This paper assesses the relative merits of tax credits for dependent children and child benefits in redistributing income and alleviating poverty in Italy. The main result is that the great emphasis put by Italian policy-makers in designing tax credits in the last 15 years has been mostly...

Foreign savings closely interact with economic performance. External loans are partly influenced by the government's attempt to balance its budget. This study investigates the relationship between public sector foreign borrowing and economic growth. Results indicate that only under circumstances...

Based on a newly assembled firm-level data set on corporate governance and firm performance for Mexico, we show that better firm-level corporate governance practices are linked to higher valuations, better performance and more dividends disbursed to investors. These results hold after...

We examine state income and government spending data to investigate the role of political parties and elections in state business cycles of the United States, and find strong support for the partisan political business cycles, both traditional and rational versions. The growth rate of per capita...

This paper analyses the potential role of per capita income, the socio-demographic characteristics of the population, and political, institutional and cultural elements as explanatory variables of the level of social protection provided in European countries. The ultimate objective is to test...

This study analyzes the dynamic effects of a patent reform in a model of cumulative innovation. It finds that the incentives at different stages of the innovation process are not uniform. The first innovator captures most of producers' surplus from a policy reform. The high incentive of the...

This paper investigates the importance of political expenditures as the primary determinants of vote shares for the Taiwan 2004 legislator campaigns with multi-member districts. Our main findings are as follows. First, advertising spending, candidates in the same party as the mayor, the...

We investigate the impact of 100 newly built toilets in villages across Dahod District (Gujarat State, India) by a non-government agency during 2005-2007. The toilets significantly reduced not only the cost of medical treatments but also the loss of wages induced by sanitation-related diseases....