"Public expenditure is an essential tool for governments to underpin prosperity, opportunities and freedom in our advanced countries. But discontent is spreading at a time when high spending, debt and new challenges risk overwhelming many governments. This book's four themes are, therefore, as...

Given high government spending, debt and the new challenges on the horizon, the themes of this work are more relevant than ever: the essential tool of spending by the state, its 'value for money', likely risks in the future, and the remedies to create lean, efficient and sustainable government....

This study presents the facts, arguments and scenarios around public debt from a global perspective. Especially the largest economies feature record debt and fiscal risks, including from population ageing and financial imbalances. Given low interest rates, there is no imminent problem. But at...

Summary In this paper, we investigate the informational content of citation-based research evaluations. To illustrate our analysis we refer to the 2005 Handelsblatt ranking of German academic economists. We make extensive use of the recently developed Hirsch-index and relate citation incidence...

There is a long-standing difference amongst public economists between those who think that collective choice must be formally acknowledged, and those who derive their policy recommendations from a social planning framework in which politics plays no role. The purpose of this book is to...

We consider a country where a king assigns benefits in accordance with privilege determined by the population’s proximity to the throne. People have different relative advantages in seeking privilege and in productive activity. The nature of the contest for privilege determines whether, in...

In this paper, we investigate the informational content of citation-based research evaluations. To illustrate our analysis we refer to the 2005 Handelsblatt ranking of German academic economists. We make extensive use of the recently developed Hirsch-index and relate citation incidence to...