This paper discusses the problem of crowding out of insurance by co-existing governmental relief programs - so-called 'charity hazard' - in a context of different institutional schemes of governmental relief in Austria and Germany. We test empirically whether an assured partial relief scheme (as...

This paper discusses the impact of foreign aid on the recipient country's preparedness against natural disasters. The theoretical model shows that foreign aid can have two opposing effects on a country's level of mitigating activities. In order to test the theoretical propositions we analyse the...

Research suggests that a donor country's decision to provide post-disaster assistance is not only driven by the severity of a disaster and the resulting humanitarian needs in the recipient country but also by strategic considerations. We argue that the identification of the determinants of the...

After the flooding in 2002 European governments provided billions of Euros of financial assistance to their citizens. Although there is no doubt that solidarity and some sort of assistance is reasonable, the question arises why these damages were not sufficiently insured. One explanation why...

The paper compares the policy choices regarding risk-transfer against low-probability-high-loss events between elected and appointed public officials. Empirical evidence using data on U.S. municipality-level shows that appointed city managers are more likely to adopt federal risk-transfer...

Public choice theory provides arguments to explain why protectionism is prevalent all over the world. In this paper it is argued that even when citizens have the possibility to decide on trade barriers in direct democracy, tariffs are maintained or even increased. This result is traced to the...

Bestehende und anhaltende Handelshemmnisse in den internationalen Wirtschaftsbeziehungen werden in der Politischen Ökonomie des Protektionismus anhand der interdependenten Beziehung zwischen Nachfragern und Anbietern im politischen Markt für Protektion erklärt. Die politisch-institutionellen...

In diesem Beitrag wird untersucht, welche Faktoren die Vergabe von finanziellen Hilfeleistungen an die Länder der Dritten Welt bestimmen. Die positive Analyse stellt auf die Interessen und die Einflußmöglichkeiten der beteiligten Akteure im politischen Entscheidungsprozeß ab. Zwei...

This study focuses on the determinants of bilateral and multilateral aid given to developing countries. We try to model the allocation process of different types of foreign aid and derive testable hypotheses using the public choice framework. The decisive motives are identified by explicitly...