The paper discusses how conflicts between the multiple objectives of policymakers (efficiency, equity, fiscal, speed of reform, signaling,...) can influence the optimal design of concessions contract for network services in infrastructure. The discussion covers the relevance of information asymmetries for the optimal regulatory regime and processes, for the optimal design of awarding processes ...

This paper analyzes the design of macroeconomic policies for Slovenia on its way into the Euro Area. We simulate different policy scenarios, distinguishing in particular between different exchange rate regimes. For this purpose, we use the model slopol4, a macroeconometric model for Slovenia. We determine ‘optimal’ exchange rate and fiscal policies for Slovenia as solutions of optimum control p...

Trade openness can reduce inflation volatility through limiting recourse to seigniorage during periods of temporary fiscal deficits, and by shifting consumption and production towards goods for which the terms of trade are relatively stable. This paper provides evidence for a negative effect of openness on inflation volatility using a dynamic panel model that controls for the endogeneity of ope...

This paper asks why Argentina slipped into a deep crisis with its currency board (CB) arrangement though this regime had received so much academic support as a stabilisation device. It is argued that a CB does not make devaluation risks disappear but translates them into an explosive, strongly pro-cyclical mixture of exchange rate, financial system and default risk which might trap a country in...

The compulsory establishment of large public lunatic asylums under Act of parliament in the nineteenth century to address the enormous increase in the number of the insane raised legal and practical challenges in relation to their status within the law of tax. As a result of their therapeutic and custodial objectives, these novel institutions required extensive landed property and very specific...

This paper analyses the design of macroeconomic policies for Slovenia during the process of full integration into the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). “Optimal” monetary and fiscal policies are determined as solutions of optimum control problems with a quadratic objective function and the macroeconometric model SLOPOL as constraint. Several optimization experiments under a flexible e...