Major conceptual contributions of a number of Nobel-laureates in putting forth a framework linking the citizenry's right to know and access to information with development, have already had a major influence in various fields. However, implementation of transparency-related reforms on the ground...

There is an adage about wealth and democracy that says “the more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances it will sustain democracy.” Accordingly, one would expect that nations rich in natural resources, and particularly those with large deposits of oil – a clear absolute advantage –...

The governments of the European Union are facing important challenges that may impact both their need and their capacity to collect taxes. First, ageing will increase some social spending while reducing the potential of some tax bases such as labour. Second, globalisation has the potential to...

This paper illustrates the use of real options principles to value prototypical resource and industryinvestment projects. It captures important competitive/strategic dimensions in a step-by-stepanalysis of investment decisions (options) under uncertainty. It compares and contrasts...

The paradigm of NPM, like its forerunners, has been trying to answer the same question for almost twenty years: how to implement policies, strategies, programs and projects, using the market-type mechanisms, so that the institutions of the state could achieve the desired results. The praises and...

A long tradition in economics explores the association between the quality of formal institutions and economic performance. The literature on the relationship between such institutions and happiness is, however, rather limited, and inconclusive. In this paper, we revisit the findings from recent...

Service adaptations, when there is changing demand or problems regarding the service provision, constitute a major issue in Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). So far, studies have explained the ex post adaptation problems by the distorted incentives for the private public-service provider to...

Is there such a thing as an optimal government size? We investigate by the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) the so-called `Armey curve' which claims an inverted U-shaped relationship between government size and economic performance. The DEA scores are linked to control variables as...

The corruption is a complex and generalized phenomenon all over the world, with cultural, social, psychological, political and economical dimensions. The defining and the studying of the phenomenon are going through the most different thinking filters known in the specialized literature:...

Are there different determinants in the fight against corruption across developing countries? Why are some countries more effective at battling corruption than others? To investigate these concerns we examine the determinants of corruption-control throughout the conditional distribution of the...