Governments try to attract firms and jobs by investing in international infrastructure. We analyse this type of strategic policy competition in a three-country model of monopolistic competition. What governments compete for, is to obtain a so called ‘hub’ position. A hub is a...

This paper uses the fact that firing costs are tenure dependent to analyze their effect on turnover and productivity. I exploit a 1999 British reform that lowered from two to one year the tenure necessary for a worker to be able to sue their employer for unfair dismissal. Empirical results show...

Corporate governance reforms have traditionally been studied from the opposing perspectives of global convergence and local persistence, but empirical support for each of these alternatives is mixed at best. Our study of corporate governance reforms in no less than 22 wealthy nations around the...

The European Commission is currently drafting a proposal for a review of the EU budget, which could lead to its most significant reform to date. This paper proposes a method for restructuring the EU budget, based on a multidisciplinary approach. The insights of public sector economics, fiscal...

Empirical work suggests that the network of research and development alliances is asymmetric, with a small number of firms involved in the majority of partnerships. This paper relates the structure of the collaboration network to a fundamental characteristic of the demand for research output:...

In April 2005 the OECD published its guidelines on the corporate governance of state-owned enterprises (S0E). Its first guideline reads that “…SOEs should not be exempt from the application of general laws and regulations… the legal and regulatory framework should allow...

It is well-known that individuals born in different periods of time (cohorts or generations) exhibit different wealth accumulation paths. While previous studies have used cohort dummies to proxy for this fact, research in this area suffers from a serious identification problem, i.e., how to...

Abstract We provide an explanation for why centralisation of political decision making results in overspending in some policy domains, whereas too low spending persists in others. We study a model in which delegates from jurisdictions bargain over local public goods provision. If all of the...