The Private Provision of International Impure Public Goods: the Case of Climate Policy

We discuss a tax-transfer scheme that aims at addressing the under-provision problem associated with the private supply of international public goods and at bringing about Pareto optimal allocations internationally. In particular, we consider the example of the global public good ‘climate stabilisation’, both in an analytical and a numerical simulation model. The proposed scheme levies Pigouvian taxes globally, while international sidepayments are employed in order to provide incentives to individual countries for not taking a free-ride from the international Pigouvian tax scheme. The side-payments, in turn, are financed via the environmental taxes. As a distinctive feature we take into account ancillary benefits that may be associated with local public characteristics of climate policy. We determine the positive impact that ancillary effects may exert on the scope for financing side-payments via environmental taxation. A particular attractive feature of ancillary benefits is that they arise shortly after the implementation of climate policies and therefore yield an almost immediate payback of investments in abatement efforts. Especially in times of high public debt levels, long periods of amortisation would tend to reduce political support for investments in climate policy.

The Dilemma of Delegating Search: Budgeting in Public Employment Service

The Recent German research has suggested that extending the number of caseworkers may have a very positive effect on PES performance. The present paper accepts this key insight but argues that there are other factors that may independently drive outcomes and in particular local agents’ discretion. That is, it focuses on the delegation problem between the central office and the local job center ‘matchmakers.’ Because their (search) effort in contacting employers and collecting data is not verifiable by the central authority, a typical moral hazard problem can arise. To overcome the delegation problem and provide high‐powered incentives for increased levels of search effort on the part of job centers, we propose output‐related schemes that assign greater staff capacity to agencies achieving high strike rates.matching unemployment, public employment service, active labor market policy, moral hazard, search theory

The Dilemma of Delegating Search: Budgeting in Public Employment Services

The poor performance often attributed to many public employment services may be explained in part by a delegation problem between the central office and local job centers. In markets characterized by frictions, job centers function as match-makers, linking job seekers with relevant vacancies. Because their search intensity in contacting employers and collecting data is not verifiable by the central authority, a typical moral hazard problem can arise. To overcome the delegation problem and provide high-powered incentives for high levels of search effort on the part of job centers, we propose output-related schemes that assign greater staff capacity to agencies achieving high strike rates.matching unemployment, public employment service, delegation problem, moral hazard, search theory

Policies to Internalize Reciprocal International Spillovers

An effective policy scheme to overcome the suboptimal low provision levels of global public goods is developed in this paper. By suggesting a decentralized approach to raise environmental public good provision levels we take account of the lack of a coercive global authority that is able to enforce efficient international environmental regulations. In our model individual regions voluntarily commence international negotiations on public good provision, which are accompanied by side-payments. These side-payments are financed by means of regional externality-correcting taxes. Side-payments and national tax rates are designed in a mutually dependent way. The decentralized scheme we recommend for approaching Pareto efficient Nash equilibria is based on the ideas of Coasean negotiations and Pigouvian taxes. As it is implementable for a wide class of Nash solutions, it is applicable to various international externality problems.transfers, environmental taxation

The Private Provision of International Impure Public Goods: the Case of Climate Policy

33 p.We discuss a tax-transfer scheme that aims at addressing the under-provision problem associated with the private supply of international public goods and at bringing about Pareto optimal allocations internationally. In particular, we consider the example of the global public good ‘climate stabilisation’, both in an analytical and a numerical simulation model. The proposed scheme levies Pigouvian taxes globally, while international sidepayments are employed in order to provide incentives to individual countries for not taking a free-ride from the international Pigouvian tax scheme. The side-payments, in turn, are financed via the environmental taxes. As a distinctive feature we take into account ancillary benefits that may be associated with local public characteristics of climate policy. We determine the positive impact that ancillary effects may exert on the scope for financing side-payments via environmental taxation. A particular attractive feature of ancillary benefits is that they arise shortly after the implementation of climate policies and therefore yield an almost immediate payback of investments in abatement efforts. Especially in times of high public debt levels, long periods of amortisation would tend to reduce political support for investments in climate policy

On Federal Transfers and Incentives

To which extent can local governments in a federal state, which compete with each other, gain some latitude of discretion to draw some additional grants from the common pool of federal funds. How must a federal transfer scheme be designed that tackles common pool fishing and at the same time fulfills the allocative and distributive objectives of the federal government

The Private Provision of International Impure Public Goods: the Case of Climate Policy

33 p.We discuss a tax-transfer scheme that aims at addressing the under-provision problem associated with the private supply of international public goods and at bringing about Pareto optimal allocations internationally. In particular, we consider the example of the global public good ‘climate stabilisation’, both in an analytical and a numerical simulation model. The proposed scheme levies Pigouvian taxes globally, while international sidepayments are employed in order to provide incentives to individual countries for not taking a free-ride from the international Pigouvian tax scheme. The side-payments, in turn, are financed via the environmental taxes. As a distinctive feature we take into account ancillary benefits that may be associated with local public characteristics of climate policy. We determine the positive impact that ancillary effects may exert on the scope for financing side-payments via environmental taxation. A particular attractive feature of ancillary benefits is that they arise shortly after the implementation of climate policies and therefore yield an almost immediate payback of investments in abatement efforts. Especially in times of high public debt levels, long periods of amortisation would tend to reduce political support for investments in climate policy