Interest in demand revealing mechanisms for providing public goods has both waned and then renewed over the past two decades. The possibility of using such mechanisms in different venues than originally anticipated sparked the research reported here. The specific motivation for this paper is to...

Social pension systems in most countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union face severe financial pressure. Aging populations are increasing that pressure, which stems mainly from in the%design in the %in the flaws and incompatible incentives in the systems. The authors describe the...

This evaluation finds that with its global mandate and experience, comprehensive country development focus, and overarching mission to fight poverty, the World Bank Group is well positioned to help countries overcome the policy, institutional, and technical challenges that prevent them from...

The effect of imitation in a competing and evolving population in different situations is studied. Agents in the population are repeatedly competing to be in a minority and they have a common strategy. Each agent has a parameter p characterizing the probability that he is following the...

Using detailed firm-level data, we analyze Spain’s Pharmaceutical Research Program, and find differences between the ex ante announced evaluation criteria and their ex post implementation. By studying the program’s implementation, we also uncover that the apparent discrimination against...

This paper highlights the importance of product differentiation and endogenous R&D in determining the optimal R&D policy, in a model where investment in cost reducing R&D is committed before firms compete in a differentiated-goods third-country export market. R&D is always taxed in oligopolies...

Economic loss to society due to dishonesty can be quite large. Policy makers use several international indices that characterize countries according to the quality of their institutions. However, no effort has been made to study how the honesty of citizens varies across sixteen countries. This...