The United States government recently passed legislation and stabilization packages to respond to the COVID-19 (i.e., coronavirus disease 2019) outbreak by providing paid sick leave, tax credits, and free virus testing; expanding food assistance and unemployment benefits; and increasing Medicaid...

We estimate the causal effect of direct elections on the economic performance of politicians. Candidates running in direct elections to head local governments in the German state of Brandenburg need an absolute majority, and votes for the winner must represent at least 15% of eligible voters. If...

Lea Immel prepared this study while she was working at the Research Group Taxation and Fiscal Policy at the ifo Institute. The study was completed in September 2020 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It consists of four distinct empirical...

Lea Immel prepared this study while she was working at the Research Group Taxation and Fiscal Policy at the ifo Institute. The study was completed in September 2020 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It consists of four distinct empirical...

Purpose This study aims to assess the degree of satisfaction regarding service quality provided by the Transportation and Communications Division of the Regional Unit of Kavala, Greece. The main purpose of the study is accomplished through the development and the empirical testing of a...

This study analyzes the efficiency of the road provision of the local governments of eastern German counties using data envelopment analysis. The provision of roads is a costly public service, which makes an efficiency analysis in this field an interesting subject. I enhance the previous...

Social impact bonds (SIBs) are an innovative financing mechanism for public goods. In a SIB, an investor provides capital to a service provider for a social intervention. The investor receives a return based on the outcome of the intervention relative to a predetermined benchmark. We describe...

This study aims to analyze the quality of public services in the archipelago. Public services in the archipelago are not getting much attention from the government; the problem is limited access to public services. The method is used in this study is a qualitative method. Access is an important...

Social inequalities are intensifying globally and widening divisions are linked to civil unrest. Disadvantaged ethnic and religious groups experience poor access to, representation in and outcomes from public services such as healthcare and education. As mechanisms for social participation and...

Social cohesion is an important precondition for peaceful and economically successful societies. The question of how societies hold together and which policies enhance social cohesion has become a relevant topic on both national and international agendas. This Briefing Paper stresses the...

Social impact bonds (SIBs) are an innovative financing mechanism for public goods. In a SIB, an investor provides capital to a service provider for a social intervention. The investor receives a return based on the outcome of the intervention relative to a predetermined benchmark. We describe...

Stefanie Gäbler prepared this study while she was working at the ifo Center for Public Finance and Political Economy. The study was completed in March 2020 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It consists of six distinct empirical essays...

Soziale Kohäsion ist eine Voraussetzung für friedliche und wirtschaftlich erfolgreiche Gesellschaften. Die Frage, was Gesellschaften zusammenhält und welche Politik soziale Kohäsion stärkt, wird auf nationaler und internationaler Ebene immer prominenter diskutiert. In diesem Briefing Papier...

Stefanie Gäbler prepared this study while she was working at the ifo Center for Public Finance and Political Economy. The study was completed in March 2020 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It consists of six distinct empirical essays...

With public services such as health and education, it is not straightforward for consumers to assess the quality of provision. Many such services are provided by monopoly not-for-profit providers and there is concern that for-profit providers may increase profit at the expense of quality. This...

Citizens in low income democracies depend, to a large extent, on the state for the provision of basic services either due to absence of a market for these services or poverty. This paper synthesizes the findings of the International Growth Centre (IGC) supported research on governance and public...

We estimate the causal effect of direct elections on the economic performance of politicians. Candidates running in direct elections to head local governments in the German state of Brandenburg need an absolute majority, and votes for the winner must represent at least 15% of eligible voters. If...

We study the effect of reducing barriers to accessing non-police services on the demand for police services in cases of police-reported domestic violence. Variation comes from a large randomized controlled trial designed to assist victims in accessing non-police services and we link information...

Citizens confront multiple challenges when attempting to access public services. This article focuses on an aspect yet unaddressed by existing literature on administrative burdens: the complexity of the written language used by government agencies in Latin America. It presents an impact...

Citizens confront multiple challenges when attempting to access public services. This article focuses on an aspect yet unaddressed by existing literature on administrative burdens: the complexity of the written language used by government agencies in Latin America. It presents an impact...

We review the literature on public sector outsourcing to explore if the theoretical predictions from the incomplete contracts literature hold up to recent empirical evidence. Guided by theory, we arrange services according to the type and magnitude of their contractibility problems. The...

Attempts to measure the capitalization of local taxes into property prices, starting with Oates (1969), have suffered from a lack of local public service controls. We revisit this vast literature with a novel dataset of 947 time-varying local characteristic and public service controls for all...

Citizens confront multiple challenges when attempting to access public services. This article focuses on an aspect yet unaddressed by existing literature on administrative burdens: the complexity of the written language used by government agencies in Latin America. It presents an impact...

We study the effect of reducing barriers to accessing non-police services on the demand for police services in cases of police-reported domestic violence. Variation comes from a large randomized controlled trial designed to assist victims in accessing non-police services and we link information...

The shift towards capacity building and deteriorating governance, may lead to poor service delivery which is a prime challenge for governing agencies. Different countries follow their own sets of governance parameters and often assess the outcome of policies based on them. In order to compose a...

This paper explains the concept of a city-based cultural ecosystem service, and how innovations and systematic operations management can help an international city to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model. Previous studies suggest that most of the...

We develop a model of two municipalities providing two public services. We show that in case of intermediate level of transferability of public services between two municipalities, Pareto-suboptimal Nash equilibrium exists. In this case, cooperation between municipalities or merging of two...

Citizens confront multiple challenges when attempting to access public services. This article focuses on an aspect yet unaddressed by existing literature on administrative burdens: the complexity of the written language used by government agencies in Latin America. It presents an impact...