We investigate interlinkages among public-sector organizations by studying the dynamics of public cash. Analyzing a comprehensive database of public-cash transactions in Slovenia, we construct weekly time series of cash sums disbursed by direct budget users (DBU), indirect budget users (IBU), and government-controlled private-law entities (GCPLE). Remarkably, the main originators of public-cash transactions are GCPLE. Using vector-autoregression, we find that cash transactions of each public-sector segment are self-perpetuating but, interestingly, covary to a limited extent. DBU transactions temporarily elevate, while GCPLE transactions permanently crowd out, IBU transactions. Shocks in DBU and IBU transactions drive GCPLE transactions during specific subperiods. Our paper offers a new empirical lens for understanding public-sector activity.
This paper considers privacy invasion, such as Street View, resulting from map services on the Internet. Reciprocal privacy invasion can develop into a Prisoners’ Dilemma. A portal site remedies such a dilemma by supplying personal information. However, under excessive supply, the problem worsens with negative utility. Whether such a situation develops or not is dependent on the cost of using a service and the coverage of information. We consider two types of taxation, on personal information and advertisements, in order to bring about a social optimum. Furthermore, we obtain a condition in which taxation brings about large tax revenues to be redistributed to privacy-encroached agents.
The article sketches the context in which economic planning has drawn Malinvaud's attention. His modelling of decentralised planning takes place in the wake of Oskar Lange's model of market socialism and all the research in optimal planning based on the Walrasian t & acirc;tonnement. Malinvaud published two models of decentralised planning, one for production planning, the other one for planning the distribution of goods and services. Being theoretical models, they have not influenced either the French planning process or economic reforms of the planning system in the USSR and Eastern Europe. The article ends up with drawing a parallel between Malinvaud and Janos Kornai, both disappointed with the collapse of planning in their countries. The two authors have simultaneously given up their research on planning for dwelling upon two variants of disequilibrium economics.
In this paper, we briefly discuss the variety of topics and methods of Comparative Economics and how it evolved over time, not only based on new interpretations and paradigms, but also due to new historical facts as well as a rapidly changing economic, institutional, and geopolitical context in the world. Great transformations have occurred in the last decades, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union and the supposed "end of history." However, history never ends, and we are witnessing profound changes not only in individual countries but also in the international economic order, accompanied by attacks on multilateralism and an evident "slowbalization" in international trade, not to mention the innovations and developments - still largely unpredictable - related to Artificial Intelligence and the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution. We analyze in particular the delicate position of the European Union, in consideration of its long-run decline as an economic power and its recent failures in acting as a protagonist in a turbulent world; yet its actuality and perspectives should be preserved, also by rediscovering and strengthening its initial values.
Can rising income inequality be reduced by taxation without harming incentives? Yes, it can, when account is taken of man as a social animal who therefore seeks social status. What counts for social status is not our absolute resources but where we stand relative to others. The more incomes surpass subsistence needs, the more grows most people’s desire for social standing. Therefore, any tax that leaves our rank unaffected will not harm our effort. Consequently, at very high incomes proportional taxes, despite maintaining progressivity and reducing inequality, should not distort incentives. A status game provides the paper’s theoretical framework.
This paper reflects on the evolution and current role of what we define as comparative economics, using the experience of the European Journal of Comparative Economics as a vantage point for observing broader disciplinary changes. Originally centered on the comparison between capitalism and socialism, comparative economics has progressively shifted toward the analysis of institutional diversity, methodological pluralism, and systemic uncertainty. Following the collapse of socialism and the subsequent dominance of market-oriented paradigms, comparative analysis was often reduced to the study of transition and convergence. Recent global developments, however, have challenged this perspective, revealing persistent heterogeneity, instability, and non-linear trajectories across economic systems. The paper argues that comparative economics is today more relevant than ever, not as a field defined by specific objects of comparison, but as a methodological approach aimed at interpreting institutional complexity and contextual variation. The analysis underscores the limits of purely classificatory or efficiency-based comparisons and highlights the need for an institution-sensitive, interpretive comparative methodology to understand contemporary economic phenomena
The objective of the paper is to assess and compare the resilience of the post-Covid US and Eurozone economies. Quarterly growth rates (annualized) of the Real GDP of US and the Eurozone are forecasted between Q4 2023 and Q4 2050. Two sets of forecasts are generated: forecasts using historical data including the pandemic (from Q4 1997 to Q3 2023) and not including the pandemic (from Q4 1997 to Q3 2019). The computation of the difference of their averages is an indicator of the resilience of the economies during the pandemic, the greater the difference the greater the resilience. Used as a benchmark, Eurozone (19 countries) shows a greater resilience to the Covid-19 pandemic (+0.27%) than the US (+0.17%) based on Q4 2023-Q4 2050 forecasts. However, the average of Q4 2023-Q4 2050 quarterly (annualized) growth rate forecasts of the Eurozone is expected to be +0.87% with the Q4 1997-Q3 2023 historical data whereas it is expected to be +1.49% for US. The US economy shows better prospects and greater momentum than the Eurozone economy.
One of the beautiful things about football is that it brings people from all over the world together to share their love of the game. The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of football on happiness using the number of points a country has in FIFA. To achieve this, we specify and estimate a cross-sectional model based on a sample of 118 countries around the world. Our empirical strategy is twofold, based on Lewbel's (2012) OLS and two-stage least squares (2SLS). Overall, our results show that the number of points a country has following participation in the FIFA World Cup is positively correlated with happiness. This result remains robust when using GMM2S, IVTOBIT and censored quantile regression (CRQ) as alternative estimation techniques.
Access to credit remains a universal challenge for firms, particularly for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). While numerous studies have examined the determinants of credit access, focusing primarily on borrower characteristics, lender policies, and formal institutional factors such as laws and regulations, the role of informal institutional dynamics has often been overlooked. Among these, religiosity remains underexplored. This paper investigates the relationship between religiosity and firms’ access to credit using cross sectional data from the 6th wave of the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS VI) and the 7th wave of the World Values Survey (WVS7), covering a sample of firms across 16 countries. The findings reveal a positive relationship between religiosity and credit access, suggesting a potential causal link between the two.
This paper analyzes the economic growth trajectories of post-communist countries that emerged following the collapse of the USSR. I treat the Soviet Union’s sudden dissolution as a natural experiment that triggered rapid institutional changes, providing a unique opportunity to iso- late institutions as the primary driver of growth. The central hypothesis is that countries that swiftly pursued EU membership experienced stronger economic performance than those that did not, with the underlying mechanism being improvements in institutional quality. The findings support this hypothesis, underscoring the pivotal role of high-quality institutional adoption in driving economic growth.
The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought global disruptions, impacting societies and economies significantly, while vaccine hesitancy remains a pressing concern. This paper introduces a framework for analyzing vaccination decision-making, emphasizing the roles of perceived costs and social influences. To craft effective policies, comprehending individuals' cost perceptions is essential. Social imitation also plays a role in vaccination choices, as individuals often emulate their social circles, potentially altering the optimal decision. The established framework demonstrates that COVID-19 policies successfully encouraged vaccination through cost-related strategies. However, similar challenges may emerge in future crises. Therefore, establishing continual information dissemination and educational programs targeting vaccine hesitancy is critical. By consistently addressing this hesitancy, authorities can navigate potential obstacles and bolster their responses to future health emergencies.
The objective of this study is to determine how perception of corruption affects the relationship between women’s empowerment and gender inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa. To do this, it uses two estimators of the generalized method of moments on a sample of 45 countries between 2002 and 2021. It shows that empowerment produces beneficial effects in reducing gender inequalities in countries working to fight corruption. Especially regarding economic empowerment, a government integrity rating of at least 25% is required. This threshold rises to 31% for political empowerment and on average to 32% for social empowerment. These thresholds vary between the different components of each component, but they remain between 25 and 35%.
This study investigates the long-term impact of socialism on economic growth, focusing on the unique case of labor-managed socialism in former Yugoslavia. By comparing Slovenia with OECD and East Asian donor countries that did not undergo postwar socialist transitions, we estimate counterfactual scenarios using synthetic control methods. Our findings show that labor-managed socialism led to a temporary growth deviation, followed by a structural collapse in the 1980s. Our estimates suggest that Slovenia’s per capita GDP would be 22 percent higher today had there been postwar economic and political liberalization in place. By contrast, if socialist policies had continued after 1990, Slovenia's per capita GDP would be 63 percent lower today. These results remain robust across various robustness checks.
We investigate differences in bribing decisions among two generations from East and West Germany in a bribery game conducted as an online study (N=168). This way, we aim to explore moral considerations of individuals influenced by two formerly different institutional systems. We find a higher propensity to bribe among young Germans compared to the older generation. Young East Germans even reveal a slightly greater inclination to bribe than their West German counterparts. We conclude that preferences for personal favors may be induced among young East Germans given the tense relationship between market opportunities and conveyed cultural traits of a socialist imprint.
This article focuses on financing the necessary public expenditures to address the challenge of climate change faced by human societies, specifically examining the choice of public debt. Considering the already significant levels of public debt worldwide, this decision becomes particularly complex. Therefore, the article explores the instruments of public debt in the context of climate change, raising questions about the consequences of unwise public borrowing and wasteful public expenditure, and how to protect future generations from bearing the primary burden of public loans. The article further undertakes a scholarly examination of what constitutional law can contribute to the ongoing debate.
The Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World index and the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom allow researchers to empirically test the hypothesis that greater economic freedom leads to higher economic growth. Government size is a component of both indices. A larger government size reduces a country’s economic freedom score while a smaller government size increases a country’s score. This study challenges the practice of treating government size as a factor that is inversely proportional to economic freedom. The study finds (1) the economic freedom indices better estimate GDP per capita if the government size component is removed, (2) government size is the only index component that, when excluded, materially improves the predictive power of the indices to estimate GDP per capita, and (3) modifying the published indices to replace government size (as a negative indicator) with government effectiveness (as a positive indicator) produces indices that are better estimators of economic growth. The author argues that a larger government size cannot itself be considered a curtailment of freedom without consideration of how tax revenues are spent, which is partially captured in the government effectiveness measure.
This article examines the link between the digital divide and women's economic participation. We use a cross-sectional model based on a panel of 45 African countries. Our results show that the digital divide (cell phone, bandwidth and Internet) worsens women's economic participation. The negative influence of the digital divide on women's economic participation tends to be amplified in countries with low democracy and in the industrial sector. Our results remain stable when we add cultural variables and when we use the alternative measure of the digital divide. However, after using the quantile regression approach, we find that these influences vary at different intervals along the distribution of women's economic participation.
This study investigates the determinants of FDI to 12 transition economies in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) by incorporating the market, institutional, and geographic factors, using panel data from 2002 to 2020. We analyze whether and how these factors differ across regions based on country-specific geographic location characteristics. The results of the Prais-Winsten regression with panel-corrected standard errors (PCSEs) show that market size, trade openness, natural resources, institutional quality, and sea access are positively associated with FDI. On the contrary, external debt and landlockedness deter FDI, but the adverse effect of landlockedness may be neutralized by sea access.
This study examines the impact of populism on central bank communication, with a focus on theoretical developments and the specific case of Hungary. Populism, characterised by the opposition between ‘the pure people’ and ‘the corrupt elite’, challenges traditional institutions, including central banks, which are seen as part of the elite due to their unelected technocratic leadership. The rise of populism has led to increased scrutiny and pressure on central banks, which have been forced to adapt their communication strategies in order to maintain credibility and public trust. The analysis explores how central banks are shifting their communication to defend their reputation in response to populist pressures, moving away from traditional roles and toward a focus on predictability and public engagement.
This paper analyses the compliance patterns of the European fiscal rules of the public debt and budget deficit in a group of twelve Member States. The aim is to make a contrafactual analysis to the compliance of those rules from 2020 to 2022 in a hypothetical scenario without the Covid-19 pandemic. Our intention is to discuss the necessity and structure of a future reform of the European fiscal framework. To that effect it is developed a forecasting analysis based on an ARIMA model, from which there will be examined the behaviour of the public finance variables in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic against the scenario without it. Our results point to an improvement in the public finance variables in the absence of the pandemic, as well as better compliance in the respective fiscal rules. Nevertheless, it is recommended a moderate reform of the European fiscal rules by the time of its predicted return in the beginning of 2024. The budget deficit rule should be maintained to prevent dangerous indebtedness dynamics. In contrast, the public debt rule should be partially restructured, due to its inadequacy with and without the Covid-19 pandemic.
