A decade ago, the German Advisory Council to the Federal Government on Global Environmental Change (Wissenschaftlichen Beirats der Bundesregierung für Globale Umweltveränderungen - WBGU) published its main report. This attempt to take stock in 2011 made an impact and provided orientation on...

The empirical literature is inconclusive about whether a country’s democratization has a long-lasting impact on former supporters or opponents of the bygone regime. With newly available individual-level data of former residents of the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR), we analyze how...

Recent empirical studies suggest that poor public sector performance in developing nations is due in part to the difficultly of selecting workers whose motivation is aligned with the mission of the institution -- in direct contrast to evidence from developed nations, public sector workers tend...

State capacity is optimized when public institutions are staffed by individuals with public-service motivation. However, when motivated agents value the collective reputation of their place of employment, steady-state equilibria with both high and low aggregate motivation (reputation) in the...