Explore the vast range of titles available.

How important is the relaxation of contact restrictions for the recovery of the German economy and what conclusions can be drawn for the appropriate level of contact restrictions in the coming months? In considering these issues, an attempt will be made to assess what significance the contact restriction measures introduced by the federal and state governments since mid-March 2020 will actually have for the current slump in economic activity in Germany. In addition, the various plausible scenarios for the spread and containment of infection are presented with different options for easing contact restrictions.

Artificial intelligence has become a defining technology for the last decade and possibly the next few. Every day, new and new applications are created based on large language models (LLM), a little hastily called artificial intelligence (AI). This reveals new and new opportunities for their use in various spheres of public life. Public administration, despite its inherent conservatism, is also one such area where AI can be used to enhance its administrative capacity and citizens’ satisfaction with administrative services. The aim of this article is to address the possibilities of using AI in public sector organizations and to reveal the limitations that hinder it. In this sense, the object of the research is the Bulgarian state institutions, and the subject - the application of AI in their work. A study was conducted that shows that the employees in the Bulgarian state administration still do not know the possibilities of AI and how to use it in their work. Abstention is due to both ignorance and lack of regulation about what apps can be used where, as well as fear of possible risks. The report presents the possibilities of using some AI-based applications in the implementation of basic work processes in administrations and justifies the need to introduce strict regulations for this. The author’s hypothesis will defend the claim that the Bulgarian administration does not know well the possibilities of digital transformation and AI, through which their work and efficiency can be improved.

Delivering good governance to citizens and businesses is a fundamental duty of any public administration. To be able to meet these requirements, public sector organisations must have the necessary administrative capacity. This is reason enough for its level to be monitored, analysed and evaluated. The aim of this paper is to present the results of the study conducted on the level of administrative capacity of the different types of public bodies included in the Administrative Register of the Republic of Bulgaria. They were obtained by surveying both representatives of the administrations themselves and their socio-economic partners. A validated methodology was applied, approbated by scientists in the relevant field and representatives of practice. The results show which groups of administrations have higher capacity and in which areas and which ones are lagging behind. A statistically significant difference was found between the assessments of administrations and those of civil society representatives.

This article evaluates online social behavior regarding the establishment of limited-use areas (LUAs) around the airports in Warsaw and Gdansk. The study relied mainly on an analysis of Google Trends statistics, in particular the dynamics of keyword searches. The article suggests that assessments of online behavior can provide a deeper understanding of social behavior. The study involved an OLS regression analysis and a causal impact analysis of the intervention based on a Bayesian structural time-series model. This article analyses different phases of an information society's activity, from the introduction of LUAs around airports to the deadline for submitting compensation claims. The results indicate that the number of searches for the keyword \"compensation\" increased significantly after the introduction of LUAs and that RSV decreased after the end of the compensation process, which confirms that the intervention significantly influenced the analyzed time series.

In proportional representation (PR) systems, political power is typically shared across several political parties. Many parties are small and focused on specific policies, such as environmental policy and immigration. Do these small parties matter for policy? I provide the first systematic evidence for this by developing the first regression discontinuity design tailored specifically for PR systems. With this method, which can be applied in all countries with PR systems, I estimate the causal effect of party representation on immigration policy, environmental policy and tax policy using data on Swedish municipalities. The results show that party representation has a large effect on the first two policies, but not on the tax policy.

The possibility of treason by a close associate has been a nightmare of most autocrats throughout history. More competent viziers are better able to discriminate among potential plotters, and this makes them more risky subordinates for the ruler. To avoid this, rulers, especially those who are weak and vulnerable, sacrifice the competence of their agents, hiring mediocre but loyal subordinates. Furthermore, any use of incentive schemes by a personalistic dictator is limited by the fact that all punishments are conditional on the dictator's own survival. We endogenize loyalty and competence in a principal-agent game between a dictator and his viziers in both static and dynamic settings. The dynamic model allows us to focus on the succession problem that insecure dictators face.

Although externality is one of the basic concepts in economics, its rigorous definition remains elusive. This paper reconceptualizes externality as an instance of a broader phenomenon of incompatibility of plans—a situation where plans of different individuals cannot be materialized simultaneously because they compete for resources that are scarce. The plan incompatibility can be addressed by institutional arrangements involving mechanisms that determine which plans will be realized. Various institutional arrangements can be compared from the perspective of efficiency, operational costs, distributional effects, and other criteria. Regardless of the institutional arrangement, the spillover effects are unavoidable, as they are implied by scarcity. Therefore, the analysis of externalities should shift its focus from spillover effects to the mechanisms for allocating scarce resources among competing plans.

The willingness to pay for insurance captures the value of insurance against only the risk that remains when choices are observed. This article develops tools to measure the ex ante expected utility impact of insurance subsidies and mandates when choices are observed after some insurable information is revealed. The approach retains the transparency of using reduced-form willingness to pay and cost curves, but it adds one additional sufficient statistic: the percentage difference in marginal utilities between insured and uninsured. I provide an approach to estimate this additional statistic that uses only the reduced-form willingness to pay curve, combined with a measure of risk aversion. I compare the approach to structural approaches that require fully specifying the choice environment and information sets of individuals. I apply the approach using existing willingness to pay and cost curve estimates from the low-income health insurance exchange in Massachusetts. Ex ante optimal insurance prices are roughly 30% lower than prices that maximize observed market surplus. While mandates reduce market surplus, the results suggest they would actually increase ex ante expected utility.

Purpose. The paper discusses the causes of rising costs and lowering productivity in healthcare systems. Design / Methodology / Approach. OECD healthcare system data from six developed countries (the USA, Japan, France, the UK, Finland, and Sweden) is cleaned and structured. Sample selection is based on a mix of size and type of healthcare system. Data from published sources is used to cross-reference quantitative data analysis. Findings. The paper challenges service management theory (Vargo & Lusch, 2004) and public service management theory, which argues that services are necessarily intangible, by showing that all services have a tangible element. The paper disputes Baumol’s (2012) cost disease theory (that service productivity necessarily declines with rising labour costs), arguing that the quality of service cannot be discounted, and taking healthcare as an example, that increasing deployment of tangible technologies enhances productivity, recognising that exogenous factors (rising cost of pharmaceuticals) are a drag on performance. Originality / Value / Practical implications. Our research question is: Does characterising public services as an intangible obfuscate the argument about their relative productivity. We conclude that basing the definition of services on intangibility obfuscates productivity. The paper concludes that the contingent element of intangibility in services is overemphasised and wrongly ascribes it as a necessary condition of public services since the person-to-person element remains pervasive and important in public services. In the SDL case of Vargo and Lusch (2007, 2017), we further conclude that ascribing logics to services, including their intangibility, suggests an uncontested meaning of services that does not exist, and in doing so subsumes agency and leadership of services by imputing a deterministic trajectory.

We extend to multiple private commodities the seminal model by Bergstrom et al. (J Public Econ 29:25–49, 1986) on the private provision of public goods. Considering the relative value of the aggregate donations, we define a notion of equilibrium and show its existence. We analyze the effects of resource redistributions on the equilibrium outcome, identifying conditions that guarantee neutrality. We study some further properties of the contribution equilibrium, and provide a strategic market game approach, defining a sequence of non-cooperative games whose equilibria converge to an equilibrium of the economy.