Many organizations have budgets that expire at the end of the fiscal year. Faced with uncertainty over future spending demands, these organizations have an incentive to build up a rainy day fund over the first part of the year. If demand does not materialize, they must rush to spend these...

An alternative history of the Continental dollar is constructed from original sources and tested against evidence on prices and exchange rates. The Continental dollar was a zero-interest bearer bond, not a pure fiat currency. The public was promised redemption at face value in specie at fixed...

We document the market response to an unexpected announcement of proposed sales of government-owned shares in China. In contrast to the "privatization premium" found in earlier work, we find a negative effect of government ownership on returns at the announcement date and a symmetric positive...

Local governments can provide services with their own employees or by contracting with private or public sector providers. We develop a model of this "make-or-buy" choice that highlights the trade-off between productive efficiency and the costs of contract administration. We construct a dataset...

We examine the effect of regime change on privatization using the 2004 election surprise in India. The pro-reform BJP was unexpectedly defeated by a less reformist coalition. Stock prices of government-controlled companies that had been slated for definite privatization by the BJP dropped by 3.5...

The fundamental feature of private contracting is its relational nature. When faced with unforeseen or unexpected circumstances, private parties, as long as the relation remains worthwhile, adjust their required performance without the need for costly renegotiation or formal recontracting....

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agency is responsible for regulating the safety and efficacy of biopharmaceutical drug products. Furthermore, the FDA is tasked with speeding new medical innovations to market. These two missions create an inherent tension within the...

Poorly functioning, and often corrupt, public procurement procedures are widely faulted for the low quality of infrastructure provision in developing countries. Can electronic procurement (e-procurement), which reduces both the cost of acquiring tender information and personal interaction...

The lack of flexibility in public procurement design and implementation reflects public agents' political risk adaptation to limit hazards from opportunistic third parties - political opponents, competitors, interest groups - while externalizing the associated adaptation costs to the public at...

Generic drugs comprise an increasing share of total prescriptions dispensed in the U.S., rising from nearly 50 percent in 1999 to 75 percent in 2009. The generic drug market has typically been viewed at the wholesale level as a competitive market with price approaching marginal costs. However,...