Sin taxes have become a widely suggested policy instrument to discourage the consumption of goods deemed harmful to individuals and society. Using surveys and experiments on a representative sample of the US population, we provide evidence on how individuals think and reason about such...

James Buchanan would have celebrated his 100th birthday in 2019. This serves as an inspiration to look at the future of public choice and the question of how much normativity public choice can bear. In our analysis we draw parallels between public choice and German ordoliberalism (and its source...

Vast literature is available covering main Informal Economy (IE) causes and consequences for Latin America and Caribbean (LAC), but its size estimation has been mainly limited to worldwide models applied to the region. This paper proposes a MIMIC Base Model using a data set composed by 41...

We develop a dynamic model in which a group collectively bargains with an external party. At each date the group makes an offer to the external party (the 'agent') in exchange for a concession. Group members hold heterogeneous preferences over agreements and are uncertain about the agent's...

Using cross-sectional data from 93 countries, we investigate the relationship between the desired level of redistribution among citizens from different socioeconomic backgrounds and the actual extent of government redistribution. Our focus on redistribution arises from the inherent class...

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...

Keynes' General Theory (1936) is arguably one of the most important books of the twentieth century. His ideas for stabilizing the aggregate economy have profoundly influenced economic theory as well as popular opinion about what governments can and should do with respect to the business cycle....

Principal-agent problems can arise when preferences of voters are not aligned with preferences of political representatives. Often the consequence of the political principal-agent problem is political catering to special interests. In this paper I provide examples of principal-agent problems...

A conservation good (such as a tropical forest) is owned by a seller who is tempted to consume (or cut), but a buyer benefits more from conservation. The seller does conserve if the buyer is expected to buy, but the buyer is unwilling to pay as long as the seller conserves. This contradiction...