We study the optimal design of mechanisms for the private provision of public goods in a simplesetting in which donors compete for a prize of commonly known value. The optimal mechanism in thismodel is the lowest-price all-pay auction – a mechanism in which the highest bidder wins but...

In this paper, we compare the cause and effect of immaterial rewards and sanctions oncooperation in a voluntary contributions experiment. We find that both rewards andsanctions increase contributions only when subjects interact repeatedly, though rewardsseem to be more effective than sanctions....

The principle of subsidiarity has become more widely known with its prominent adoption in the Maastricht Treaty. The principle is, however, deeply embedded in the history of political economy, notably in the continental European tradition. In this tradition, it has the status of a principle in...

Bureaucratie en bureaucratisering zijn verschijnselen waardoor zowel moderne overheidsorganisaties als moderne ondernemingen worden geplaagd. Aan de bureaucratische organisatievorm kleven zowel voordelen als nadelen. De nadelen ervan worden in de moderne samenleving echter steeds groter. In dit...

Paper presented at the AEA-Conference in Göteborg, Sweden, 9-11 May 1996 In this paper we discuss the influence of tax shifting on wages and employment. The paper is related to earlier research in this field, both for the Netherlands and for other European welfare states. Our approach differs...

Voting problems with a continuum of voters and finitely many alternatives are considered. The classical Arrow and Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorems are shown to persist in this model, not for single voters but for coalitions of positive size. The emphasis of the study is on strategic...

A central finding in happiness research is that a person’s income relative to the average income in her social reference group is more important for her life satisfaction than the absolute level of her income. This dependence of life satisfaction on relative income can be related to the...

Paper Originally Presented at the 65th Annual Conference of the Southern Economic Association , Fairmont Hotel, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States of America, November 18-20, 1995. Bureaucratic service organisations in the public sector are increasingly loosing their previous comfortable...

We introduce a new class of bankruptcy problems in which the value of the estate is endogenous and depends on agents'' investment decisions. There are two investment alternatives: investing in a company and becoming a shareholder (risky asset) and depositing money into a bank (risk-free asset)....

Half a millenium ago, Theophrast Bombast von Hohenheim who called himself Paracelsus (1493-1541) entered this world in order to revolutionize thought on health care related issues in ways that seem strikingly modern today. Although to a large extent Paracelsus was still a man of the middle ages,...