http://repub.eur.nl/res/concept/jel-H4/ Recent publications classified by JEL Code H4 en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/34707/ 2012-07-03T00:00:00Z Field-experimental studies have shown that people litter more in more littered environments. Inspired by these findings, many cities around the world have adopted policies to quickly remove litter. While such policies may avoid that people follow the bad example of litterers, they may also invite free-riding on public cleaning services. This paper reports the results of a natural field experiment where, in a randomly assigned part of a residential area, the frequency of cleaning was reduced from daily to twice a week during a three-month period. Using high-frequency data on litter at treated and control locations before, during, and after the experiment, we find strong evidence that litter begets litter. However, we also find evidence that some people start to clean up after themselves when public cleaning services are diminished. Dur, A.J. Vollaard, B. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/30602/ 2011-11-01T00:00:00Z Public providers have no financial incentive to respect their legal obligation to exempt the poor from user fees. Health Equity Funds (HEFs) aim to make exemptions effective by giving NGOs responsibility for assessing eligibility and compensating providers for lost revenue. We use the geographic spread of HEFs in Cambodia to identify their impact on out-of-pocket (OOP) payments. Among households with some OOP payment, HEFs reduce the amount by 29%, on average. The effect is larger for households that are poorer, mainly use public health care and live closer to a district hospital. HEFs are more effective in reducing OOP payments when they are operated by a NGO, rather than the government, and when they operate in conjunction with the contracting of public health services. HEFs reduce households' health-related debt by around 25%, on average. There is no significant impact on non-medical consumption and health care utilisation. Flores, G. Por, I. Men, C.R. O'Donnell, O.A. Doorslaer, E.K.A. van http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/16515/ 2009-07-29T00:00:00Z We assess whether public sector employees have a stronger inclination to serve others and are more risk averse than employees in the private sector. A unique feature of our study is that we use revealed rather than stated preferences data. Respondents of a large-scale survey were offered a substantial reward and could choose between a widely redeemable gift certificate, a lottery ticket, or making a donation to a charity. Our analysis shows that public sector employees are significantly less likely to choose the risky option (lottery) and, at the start of their career, significantly more likely to choose the pro-social option (charity). However, when tenure increases, this difference in pro-social inclinations disappears and, later on, even reverses. Our results further suggest that quite a few public sector employees do not contribute to charity because they feel that they already contribute enough to society at work for too little pay. Buurman, M.W.J.M. Dur, A.J. Bossche, S. van den http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/14024/ 2008-06-24T00:00:00Z This paper addresses the nature, formalization, and neural bases of (affective) social ties and discusses the relevance of ties for health economics. A social tie is defined as an affective weight attached by an individual to the well-being of another individual (‘utility interdependence’). Ties can be positive or negative, and symmetric or asymmetric between individuals. Characteristic of a social tie, as conceived of here, is that it develops over time under the influence of interaction, in contrast with a trait like altruism. Moreover, a tie is not related to strategic behavior such as reputation formation but seen as generated by affective responses. A formalization is presented together with some supportive evidence from behavioral experiments. This is followed by a discussion of related psychological constructs and the presentation of suggestive neural findings, based on the existing literature. We conclude with some suggestions for future research. Publication forthcoming in 'On the Nature, Modeling and Neural Bases of Social Ties', Daniel E. Houser and Kevin A. McCabe (eds), Neuroeconomics, Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research, Emerald Insight Publishing. Winden, F.A.A.M. van Stallen, M. Ridderinkhof, K.R. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/8409/ 2007-01-11T00:00:00Z Physicians are supposed to serve patients' interests, but some are more inclined to do so than others. This paper studies how the system of health care provision affects the allocation of patients to physicians when physicians differ in altruism. We show that allowing for private provision of health care, parallel to (free) treatment in a National Health Service, benefits all patients. It enables rich patients to obtain higher quality treatment in the private sector. Because the altruistic physicians infer that in their absence, NHS patients receive lower treatment quality than private sector patients, they optimally decide to work in the NHS. Hence, after allowing for private provision, the remaining (relatively poor) NHS patients are more likely to receive the superior treatment provided by altruistic physicians. We also show, however, that allowing physicians to moonlight, i.e. to operate in both the NHS and the private sector simultaneously, nullifies part of these beneficial effects for the poorest patients. Delfgaauw, J. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/7600/ 2006-03-08T00:00:00Z Why do people leave high-income countries with extensive welfare states? This article will examine what underlies the emigration intentions of native-born inhabitants of one industrialized country in particular: the Netherlands. To understand emigration from high-income countries we focus not only on factors that refer to individual characteristics, but also on the perception of the quality of the public domain, which involves institutions (social security, educational system, law and order) as well as the 'public goods' these institutions produce: social protection, safety, environmental quality, education, etc. Based on data about the emigration intentions of the Dutch population collected during the years 2004-2005 we conclude that besides traditional characteristics of potential emigrants - young, single, male, having a network in the country of destination, higher educated, seeking new sensations - modern-day emigrants are motivated not so much by private circumstances but by a longing for a better public domain. In particular, emigrants are in search of a better quality of life as approximated by the presence of nature, space, silence, and a less populated country. To gauge the effect of the quality of the public domain, a counterfactual scenario is offered, which suggests that a perception of severe neglect of the public domain substantially increases the pressure to emigrate. Under this scenario, approximately 20 percent of the Dutch population would express an intention to emigrate. Compared with the level of emigration intentions measured today, this represents an increase by a factor of 5. Dalen, H.P. van Henkens, K. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/14993/ 2005-06-01T00:00:00Z When do people support sanctioning systems in social dilemmas? Sanctions increase collective efficiency, but have the disadvantage of restricting people’s autonomy. This paper studies the effects of feedback about collective (in)efficiency and the influence of the presence or absence of a sanctioning system. The results show that, except after feedback about collective inefficiency, people were reluctant to support installation of a sanctioning system. When a sanctioning system was already present, however, sanction support was strong and not affected by feedback. Interestingly, the presence of a sanctioning system increased pessimism about attaining collective efficiency. This suggests that the mere presence of a sanctioning system creates the need to have that sanctioning system, and that installing one can have irreversible consequences. Mulder, L.B. Dijk, E. van Wilke, H.A.M. Cremer, D. de http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/6604/ 2005-01-04T00:00:00Z Science is a winner-take-all profession in which only few contributions get excessive attention and the large majority of papers remains receives scant or no attention. This so-called ‘waste’ together with all the competitive strategies of scientists seeking attention is part and parcel of any creative profession and not a worrisome fact as the price society pays for human ingenuity is extremely small: 0.0006 percent of world income goes into the publication of scientific research. The more worrisome features of competition in academic economics reveal themselves not through ordinary citation or publication statistics or competitive attention seeking strategies. The badly designed use of market principles in which citations and publications have become the sole measuring rod of scientific ‘productivity’ deserve more attention instead of the excessive focus of attention on uncitedness as such. Dalen, H.P. van Klamer, A. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/11257/ 2004-10-01T00:00:00Z This paper evaluates the two well-known final waste disposal methods, incineration and landfilling. In particular we compare the social cost of two best-available technologies using a point estimate based on private and environmental cost data for the Netherlands. Not only does our comparison allow for Waste-to-Energy incineration plants but for landfills as well. The data provide support for the widespread policy preference for incineration over landfilling only if the analysis is restricted to environmental costs alone and includes savings of both energy and material recovery. Gross private costs, however, are so much higher for incineration, that landfilling is the social cost minimizing option at the margin even in a densely populated country such as the Netherlands. Furthermore, we show that our result generalizes to other European countries and probably to the USA. Implications for waste policy are discussed as well. Proper treatment of and energy recovery from landfills seem to be the most important targets for waste policy. Finally, WTE plants are a very expensive way to save on climate change emissions. Dijkgraaf, E. Vollebergh, H.R.J. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/1585/ 2004-09-13T00:00:00Z Governments wishing to encourage the private sector provision of a public good can choose amongst a wide variety of economic instruments. This paper analyses how governments in the EU(15) countries have succeeded in stimulating investment in wind turbines between 1985 and 2000, using national laws and decrees, IEA/OECD data on wind turbines, and one hypothetical investment project to calculate Tobin's Q. The main question addressed is whether the portfolio of policy instruments matters, or whether government support for the private provision of a public good is a matter of a pecuniary transferral. Mulder, A. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/11258/ 2003-01-01T00:00:00Z The article discusses the possible cost savings of contracting out refuse collection in the Netherlands. Our findings indicate that similar to foreign econometric studies cost savings of approximately 15-20% apply to the Netherlands. Moreover, compared with the existing literature we show that different production technologies apply to internal municipal waste collection units and external refuse collection firms. Different cost functions have to be estimated for the sub-samples. Though significant cost savings exist on contracting out waste collection, households will not experience these cost savings on a one to one basis. Private refuse collection firms must pay VAT while public entities are exempted. Thus, the fiscal system hinders a more pronounced role for private refuse collection firms. Dijkgraaf, E. Gradus, R.H.J.M. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/6793/ 2002-12-02T00:00:00Z This paper examines the consequences of creating a fully competitive market in a sector previously dominated by a cost-minimising public firm. Workers in the economy are heterogenous in their motivation to work in the sector. In line with empirical findings, our model implies that firms in the competitive market provide stronger monetary incentives to workers, reach higher productivity, and employ less workers than the public firm. Allocative efficiency therefore increases. Nevertheless, prices of the sector's output rise as competition between private firms for the best motivated workers leads to higher wage cost than under the public monopsony. Delfgaauw, J. Dur, A.J. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/6807/ 2002-06-11T00:00:00Z Centralisation of political decision making often fails to produce the desired results. For instance, it is frequently argued that decision making within the European Union results in overspending and overregulation in some policy areas, while too low spending and too little regulation prevails in other policy areas. In this paper, we study a model in which delegates from jurisdictions bargain over the amounts of public goods provided by jurisdictions. Following Besley and Coate (2000) we show that local policy makers have an incentive to delegate bargaining to 'public good lovers' if all the cost of public goods are shared through a common budget. Consequently, overprovision of public goods results. If a sufficiently large part of the cost of public goods can not be shared among regions, underprovision of public goods persists under centralised decision making because local policy makers delegate bargaining to 'conservatives'. Underprovision is strongest when spillover effects are moderate: both in the absence of spillover effects and in the case of global public goods, centralised decision making produces the social optimum. Finally, we study financing rules that may help to avoid strategic delegation by local policy makers. Dur, A.J. Roelfsema, H.J.