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The question of how governments should choose the frequency of payments has received little attention in the literature on the optimal design of public benefits programs. We propose a simple model in which the government chooses the length of the interval between payments, subject to a tradeoff between the administrative cost of providing more frequent benefits and the welfare gain from reducing deviations from full consumption smoothing. In our empirical application, we examine consumer and retailer responses to bimonthly payments from the Japanese National Pension System. We exploit variation in the duration of payment cycles using a unique retail dataset that links consumers to their purchase history. Our difference-in-differences style approach shows a clear spike in spending on payment dates for customers who are of retirement age relative to those who are not. While within-store average prices increase by 1.6% on payday, this effect is almost entirely due to consumers substituting towards higher quality goods rather than a retailer response. We use these reduced form estimates to parameterize the model and conclude that the optimal frequency of Japanese public pension payments is less than one month, implying the government could improve welfare by increasing payment frequency.

This article applies regulatory competition theory to an unexplored case of competition among legal norms: asylum. The asylum case study allows for a discussion of two main assumptions of regulatory competition theory: the spontaneous emergence of competition among rules and the mechanical response of regulators to market forces. The article explains to what extent the current legal framework impacts on the emergence and development of the competitive process. This framework determines the existence of a market of legal norms, it impacts on the arbiters' mobility and on States' decision to compete. The article then addresses the mechanical vision of competition. It shows that law frames the response given by regulators to market forces. It discusses the hypothesis that competing legal rules evolve in a linear way and converge. Finally, the asylum case shows the limits of competition theory's ability to explain the evolution of law.

How to optimize China's protective mechanism for overseas citizens has become the top agenda of China's public administration. A comparison of the evacuation policies of China and the US in the 2010s reveals that the Chinese government's operations attach more importance to the actual effects of evacuation and the feelings of citizens, while considering the responsibility of citizens and cost burden less. This generous evacuation policy can be partly rationalized by China's domestic factors, such as the "Going Global" policy, its contemporary image as a populous rising power, and its traditional family-country narrative, which generates a familial conception of state–citizen relations and encourages the government to take extra responsibility for citizens. While the familial conception of state–citizen relations is conductive to building national identity and cohesion, it blurs the dividing line between civic responsibility and governmental responsibility, undercuts the efficiency of public administration, causes waste of public resources, and overburdens governmental agencies. As China's industrialization and urbanization progress, how to revise the long-established familial conception of state–citizen relations and establish a responsible civil society based on contractual rule of law has become an urgent issue. Points for practitioners This study highlights the parental role of the Chinese government in the protection of overseas citizens and attributes it partly to the traditional family-country narrative, which generates a family conception of state–citizen relations. While this conception is conductive to building national identity and cohesion, it causes waste of public resources and overburdens governmental agencies. It is necessary to revise the long-established conception and cultivate a responsible civil society to improve the efficiency of public administration in contemporary China.

22 pages ; In this paper we use the notion of distributable surplus, introduced by Allais (1943) and Luenberger (1992), to evaluate the capacity of European countries to repay their debts. In our analysis, we use Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models to simulate di erent policies that can be implemented to achieve debt sustainability. We rst evaluate the quantity of distributable surplus that can be extracted from policies aiming at increasing the quantity of labor and/or capital available in the economy. We show that the results are very sensitive whether we consider de cits before and after the recent nancial and economic crises. Then, assuming that governments are able to capture all the distributable surpluses, we compute the date at which they are able to repay their debts. In particular, we nd that most EU countries, excepted Germany and to lesser extent France and the UK, cannot achieve debt sustainability. We nally discuss the usefulness of Eurobonds.

22 pages ; In this paper we use the notion of distributable surplus, introduced by Allais (1943) and Luenberger (1992), to evaluate the capacity of European countries to repay their debts. In our analysis, we use Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models to simulate di erent policies that can be implemented to achieve debt sustainability. We rst evaluate the quantity of distributable surplus that can be extracted from policies aiming at increasing the quantity of labor and/or capital available in the economy. We show that the results are very sensitive whether we consider de cits before and after the recent nancial and economic crises. Then, assuming that governments are able to capture all the distributable surpluses, we compute the date at which they are able to repay their debts. In particular, we nd that most EU countries, excepted Germany and to lesser extent France and the UK, cannot achieve debt sustainability. We nally discuss the usefulness of Eurobonds.

22 pages ; In this paper we use the notion of distributable surplus, introduced by Allais (1943) and Luenberger (1992), to evaluate the capacity of European countries to repay their debts. In our analysis, we use Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models to simulate di erent policies that can be implemented to achieve debt sustainability. We rst evaluate the quantity of distributable surplus that can be extracted from policies aiming at increasing the quantity of labor and/or capital available in the economy. We show that the results are very sensitive whether we consider de cits before and after the recent nancial and economic crises. Then, assuming that governments are able to capture all the distributable surpluses, we compute the date at which they are able to repay their debts. In particular, we nd that most EU countries, excepted Germany and to lesser extent France and the UK, cannot achieve debt sustainability. We nally discuss the usefulness of Eurobonds.

'Der Wandel von Gesellschaft und Familie auf dem Hintergrund des Deutungsmusters der funktionalen Differenzierung bedingt Rückwirkungen auf die Familienpolitik, die die Familien als elementare Leistungsträger in ihren Zukunftschancen zu sichern und zu fördern sucht. In mehr grundsätzlicher Sicht wird - nach einer kurzen Zusammenfassung wesentlicher Gesichtspunkte zur Einschätzung der künftigen Familienentwicklung - vor allem die Tragweite von bisher nicht ausreichend aufgearbeiteten Ergebnissen der jüngeren Systemtheorie für die familienpolitischen Handlungsmöglichkeiten und -grenzen kritisch erörtert. Dabei werden zentrale Fragen von Veränderungen im Familienpolitik-Verständnis berührt, das etwa hinsichtlich der überkommenen Funktion und Leistung staatlicher Politik zwar nicht zu ersetzen, wohl aber mit erst noch zu entwickelnden neuen Politikmustern zu erweitern und zu modifizieren ist. Gleichwohl sind die 'Eigengesetzlichkeiten' der gesellschaftlichen Teilsysteme nicht als unabänderliche Gegebenheiten hinzunehmen, sondern bilden eine Gestaltungsaufgabe einer sozialen Ordnungspolitik, in die auch die Familienpolitik (als gesellschaftliche 'Querschnittspolitik') zu integrieren ist. Die direkten Einwirkungsmöglichkeiten des Staates werden eher begrenzter; verstärkte Bedeutung gewinnt - neben der eigenverantwortlichen Selbstorganisation im familialen Handlungszusammenhang - u.a. das Subsystem Wirtschaft mit einer eigenständigen unternehmerischen Familienpolitik, für die aber wiederum entsprechende Rahmenbedingungen durch die staatliche und kommunale Politik zu schaffen sind.' (Autorenreferat)

Tourism policies formulated and implemented by the union and state governments of India and Bihar respectively, over the past five decades, have played a significant role in attracting religious tourists to the Buddhist sites in Bihar from all across the world. This exploratory research is a historiographical narrative of Buddhist tourism in view of tourism development policies and plans. The study finds that favourable and effective policies have increased domestic and foreign tourism in India, especially international Buddhist pilgrimage to Bihar. However, the state of Bihar still needs better policies and marketing to promote Buddhist tourism. The paper explores the overlooked role of government tourism development policies in promoting spiritual and religious tourism in India, in addition to chronicling the development of tourism in Bihar. The study paves the path for further research into a potential tourism resource that the state of Bihar possesses but has not been able to fully realise. This case study is one of very few attempts to relate the role of policies in the development of tourism in South Asia.

Union efforts at labor law reform and wage negotiations within the framework of the government-created Permanent Council for Social Concertation; 1985-91.

We consider an abstract setting of the differential r&d game, where participating firms are allowed for strategic behavior. We assume the information asymmetry across those firms and the government, which seeks to support newer technologies in a socially optimal manner. We develop a general theory of robust subsidies under such one-sided uncertainty and establish results on relative optimality, duration and size of different policy tools available to the government. It turns out that there might exist multiple sets of second-best robust policies, but there always exist a naturally induced ordering across such sets, implying the optimal choice of a policy exists for the government under different uncertainty levels.