Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland face the serious challenge of adjusting not only to lower Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) transfers because of the global economic crisis, but also to a potential further decline over the medium term. This paper assesses options for the design of...

It is widely agreed that a fiscal rule should boost discipline and credibility, reduce macroeconomic volatility, and be easily understood. To support such goals, a government may run structural surpluses and accumulate a precautionary cushion of assets on behalf of agents who do not enjoy access...

Soft budget constraints (SBCs) can be said to exist in situations where governments rescue loss-making firms in order to guarantee their survival by means of either a direct or an indirect injection of credit. The credit markets of the former socialist economies of Central and Eastern Europe...

The supposed preference of firms for internal sources of finances to fund their investments can be explained by either the free cash flow or the financial constraints theories, both stem from asymmetric information. Neither theory was found fully valid by recent research. Using a French data...

Motivated by sponsored search auctions, we study multi-unit auctions with budget constraints. In the mechanism we propose, Sort-Cut, understating budgets or values is weakly dominated. Since Sort-Cut's revenue is increasing in budgets and values, all kinds of equilibrium deviations from true...