Universities' heads accuse governments of interfering

Asbestos panelists accuse government of misusing science.

Managers accuse ministers of spin over money for NHS.

News The health secretary's announcement last week that he was going to use his powers of direction to ensure that £600m ($960m) of new NHS money went to front line services has angered representatives of health authorities. Alan Milburn told the House of Commons last week that £600m of the extra £2bn which the chancellor of the exchequer announced in the budget for the next financial year (1 A...

Distribution of Powers between Central Governments and Sub-national Governments

The views expressed and the content presented in the paper are those of the authors and do not imply any expression of opinion on the part of the United Nations.

In-state versus out-of-state students: the divergence of interest between public universities and state governments

This paper examines the divergence of interest between universities and state governments concerning standards for admitting in-state versus out-of-state students. We find that public universities set lower minimum admission standards for in-state than out-of-state applicants, presumably in response to state pressure, while private universities treat both groups equally. However, we also find t...

Persistence of Bad Governments

We study dynamic selection of governments under different political institutions, with a special focus on institutional "flexibility" . A government consists of a subset of the individuals in the society. The competence level of the government in office determines collective utilities (e.g., by determining the amount and quality of public goods), and each individual derives additional utility f...