S ubsidies are usually the subject of purely economic debates. They represent flow of resources from one economic sector to another and can be fundamental to competitive ability of industries in different nations. Subsidies are not restricted to economics, however, and are a pervasive factor in the ecological commerce between ecosystems. In this issue of PNAS, Menge et al. (1) show the influenc...

Ireland's private health insurance market provides primarily supplementary health insurance for hospital services, operating alongside a public hospital system to which residents have universal access entitlements, subject to some copayments for those without a medical card. The State subsidises the purchase of private health insurance through measures including tax relief on premiums and not c...

The 12th Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlighted the importance of ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns. Researchers have found that energy subsidies may encourage overconsumption, misuse, moral hazard problems. Hence, there is a need to rationalize inefficient subsidies. Consequently, Malaysian government has been implementing subsidy reformation program improve ef...

After independence, energy and food subsidies became a cornerstone of the social contracts in Middle East North Africa (MENA) countries. Governments spent heavily to reduce poverty strengthen their own legitimacy. However, as government rents faded, subsidy spending financially unsustainable foreign donors pressed for reforms. Yet, reform has been challenging all governments affect consumers, t...

Professional sports teams receive large public subsidies for new facility construction. Empirical research suggests that these subsidies cannot be justified by tangible or intangible economic benefits. We develop a model of bargaining between local governments and teams over subsidies that includes league expansion decisions. The model features loss aversion by fans that captures lost utility w...

The response of household borrowing to changes in the interest rate is a crucial parameter to understand whether or not monetary policy can promote household investment in housing, and what are the determinants of the consumption durables. We provide an estimate of this response by exploiting a reform in a large program in Portugal: “Credito BoniÞcado” (CB). The CB program was launched in 1986 ...

tries around the world have implemented a series of neoliberal policies aimed at redefining the role of the state in the economy. This trend has been particularly pronounced in infrastructure industries such as telecommunications, electricity, water, sanitation, and transportation, in which state-owned enterprises long enjoyed monopolies. “Market-oriented” reform in these industries has include...