The main of objective of this diploma thesis is to define health care as economic goods based on the theoretical definitions. The fact whether health care should be considered as private goods or public goods plays a vital role in this debate. The initial hypothesis presupposes that health care is (based on the basic economic criteria) private goods; however there is objective evidence demonstrating that health care should be understood in terms of public goods. The author defines the necessary terminology and theoretical concepts. According to several expert concepts the author concludes that based on the basic economic definitions health care could be understood as private goods, admitting that in the real world objective limitations exist, which prevent keeping health care exclusively in the economic sphere. The thesis also evaluates the role of individual health care sectors, including their drawbacks. The author demonstrates all concepts on the Czech health care system. In the analytic part of the thesis the author demonstrates discrepancies between theoretical concepts and practice on specific models, including the risks of exclusively private financing of health care. For this purpose three income groups has been defined. The author compares expenditures of these groups on selected medical services with different levels of their savings. The thesis also deals with methods of economical analysis and its limitations in health care system analysis.

Les articles constitutifs de cette thèse analysent les défaillances des marchés financiers traditionnellement identifiées par les économistes (associées aux externalités, aux asymétries d'information et à l'incomplétude des marchés) et les réponses des pouvoirs publics. Une observation centrale est que les interventions publiques ne résultent presque jamais d'une analyse à froid de ces défaillances de marché, mais se décident dans l'urgence pour répondre aux dysfonctionnements les plus évidents observés lors d'une crise. Cette approche pragmatique et a-théorique conduit à des interventions mal calibrées. Ces articles s'attaquent notamment à la politique du prêteur en dernier ressort qui encourage l'endettement à court terme des institutions financières, et nourrit le risque systémique. Ils soulignent également les risques de certaines réformes décidées à la suite de la crise des « subprime ». Les pouvoirs publics devraient se concentrer sur la fourniture des biens publics clairement identifiés par l'analyse économique (contrôle des « agents » et information), et ne pas multiplier les interventions hasardeuses qui créent parfois plus d'imperfections de marché qu'elles ne prétendent en résoudre. / The constituent articles of this dissertation analyze the financial market failures traditionally identified by economists (associated with externalities, information asymmetries and incompleteness of markets) and the policy responses. A central observation is that public interventions have almost never resulted from a cold analysis of these market failures but are decided in a hurry to respond to the most obvious shortcomings observed during a crisis. This pragmatic and a-theoretical approach leads to poorly calibrated interventions. These articles are addressing in particular the lender of last resort policy that encourages the issuance of various short-term debts by financial institutions and feeds systemic risk. They also highlight the risks of certain reforms decided after the "subprime" crisis. Governments should focus on the provision of public goods clearly identified by economic analysis (control of "agents" and information), and should not multiply risky interventions that sometimes create more market imperfections than they claim to solve.

博士（経済学） / 乙第354号 / 112 p. / Hitotsubashi University

Volksentscheide sind ein Instrument der direkten Demokratie. Durch sie erhält die Bevölkerung die Möglichkeit, sich an der politischen Willensbildung zu beteiligen und direkt über Sachthemen abzustimmen - so am 27. Februar 2005 in Dresden, als die Stadtbevölkerung zur Abstimmung über die Realisierung des Verkehrszuges „Waldschlößchenbrücke Dresden“ aufgerufen war. Die Untersuchung des Abstimmungsverhaltens der Dresdner Bevölkerung beim Bürgerentscheid ist Gegenstand dieser Arbeit. So werden mittels thematischer Karten und multipler Regressionsrechnung Zusammenhänge zwischen dem Abstimmungsverhalten beim Bürgerentscheid und den Merkmalen der Bevölkerung analysiert. Im Fokus der Untersuchung steht die Modellierung des Abstimmungsverhaltens, d.h. die Abbildung möglicher Einflussfaktoren und die Suche nach der richtigen Modellspezifikation. Unter Anwendung des Bottom-up-Ansatzes zur Suche nach der richtigen Modellspezifikation zeigt sich, dass die durch Variablen abgebildeten Einflussfaktoren Ideologie, Nutzen, Alter und Bildung ca. 84% der Gesamtvarianz des Abstimmungsverhaltens erklären. Aus diesen Schätzergebnissen lässt sich schlussfolgern, dass die ideologische Einstellung des Wählers, gepaart mit dem vom Wähler erwarteten Nutzen, dessen Alter und Bildungsgrad, den größten Einfluss auf die Zustimmung zum Verkehrsprojekt hatte. Darüber hinaus deuten der positive Einfluss des Alters und der negative Einfluss des Bildungsgrades auf die Zustimmung zum Verkehrsprojekt darauf hin, dass die Bereitstellung von Verkehrsinfrastruktur durch alte und weniger gut ausgebildete Wählerschichten bevorzugt wird. Um diese Erkenntnisse für künftige Volksentscheide zu Verkehrsinfrastrukturprojekten nutzbar zu machen, wird die Prognosegüte des Modells des Abstimmungsverhaltens mittels Kreuzvalidierung überprüft. Das Ergebnis der Kreuzvalidierung ist eindeutig: Mit einer deutlich unter dem Grenzwert liegenden Abweichung eignet sich das Modell für Prognosen.

The aim of this study is to analyze legitimacy of policy. Its fulfillment should emerge from detailed inquiry of the essential sense of social institutions. The work is divided into three chapters therefore. The first chapter deals with law as a basic system of order of social relations. It explains its fundamental social goal (reducing transaction costs of social action) and its influence on the development of civilization. It discusses in detail the property rights as a fundament of any real legal system - both at the legal level and economic level (i.e. how the system of property rights coordinates social activities and allocates scarce resources, how it creates the elite, and when there is a fault efficiency of this process). The second chapter deals with the social obligations which are necessary condition for preservation of law. These obligations are labeled as taxes (as opposed to tributes that basis is not in the obligation to maintain the legal system and are only ransom inherently). Particular attention is paid to the fair distribution of these obligations (tax justice) and also to the impact of taxation on the development of civilization. The last (third) chapter deals with institutional framework of society, i.e. the exercise of public power and public administration (government...

In the 21st century data has become a very valuable resource, being collected by individuals, companies, organizations and governments. Unfortunately, as more and more data is being collected, more time is also spent on locking it up, centralizing power and knowledge to a few actors. Open data is an idea and field of research, with a clear aim to make data available to everyone without restrictions. Among various benefits, it has been suggested that open data has great economic potential, but since most people lack the necessary skills to make use of the data there needs to be an actor which creates a service around it. However, despite the predictions of wealth open data service creation is still in its infancy; few services are being created and most projects do not last beyond prototype stage. This thesis investigates reasons for why many open data applications (ODAs) do not continue developing and how one can overcome these obstacles. The study is carried out as a multiple case study on five Swedish cases that all were created during a publicly funded hackathon, Hack for Sweden. The cases are analyzed from multiple perspectives, including common reasons for startup failure, market failure theory and business model analysis. Findings suggest that the failure of an ODA is a multi-dimensional problem, which is in line with previous research on general startup failure. The study concludes that failure of an ODA can be attributed to factors related to the product and the entrepreneur(s), but also to general characteristics of ODAs. These characteristics come into play when the ODA aims to create value for society or a public actor. In such cases the study concludes that in order for more ODAs to develop sustainably and create value in the long-term, actors from the public sector must support and cooperate with ODA-creators in the development of the services. / Under 2000-talet har data blivit en mycket värdefull resurs och samlas in av individer, företag, organisationer och offentlig sektor. I takt med att mer och mer data samlas in spenderas tyvärr också mer tid på att begränsa åtkomsten till datan - vilket centraliserar makt och kunskap till ett fåtal aktörer. Öppna data är en idé och forskningsområde som syftar till att tillgängliggöra data för alla, utan restriktioner. Utöver transparens och andra demokratiska fördelar har det föreslagits att öppna data har en signifikant ekonomisk potential, men eftersom de flesta saknar nödvändiga kunskaper för att dra nytta av datan behövs det en aktör som bygger en tjänst kring den. Trots förmodan att öppna data har en stor ekonomisk potential ligger öppna data-tjänsteskapandet fortfarande i sin linda; endast ett fåtal projekt skapas och de flesta fortsätter inte efter prototyp-stadiet. Den här studien undersöker anledningar till varför många öppna data applikationer (ODA - akronymen följer den engelska termen "Open Data Application" för att undvika missförstånd) inte fortsätter utvecklas och hur man kan hantera dessa problem. Studien är utformad som en flerfallsstudie av fem svenska projekt som alla skapades under det offentligt finansierade hackathonet - Hack for Sweden. Fallen analyserades ur ett flertal perspektiv, däribland vanliga anledningar till varför startup:s misslyckas, toeri kring marknadsmisslyckanden, samt affärsmodellsanalys. Studiens resultat visar att orsaken till varför många ODA-projekt misslyckas är ett multidimensionellt problem, vilket är i linje med tidigare forskning på startup-misslyckanden i allmänhet. Studiens slutsats är att ett ODA-misslyckande kan tillskrivas faktorer kopplat till produkten och entreprenören, men också generella attribut hos ODAs. Dessa attribut har en avgörande roll när ODAn ämnar skapa värde för samhäller eller offentlig sektor. I sådana fall är slutsatsen att för att fler ODAs ska kunna utvecklas hållbart och skapa värde långsiktigt, måste aktörer från offentlig sektor finansiera och samarbeta med ODA-skaparna i utveckligen av ODAn.

This dissertation focuses on the non-market valuation of health-risks of malaria, an infectious disease that imposes a substantive public health burden across the globe, hitting particularly hard the tropical developing nations of Africa and Asia. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals include malaria control as a priority and large investments are underway to promote effective prevention and treatment. Despite such concerted supply-side efforts, malaria-related mortality and morbidity still abound due to a complex interface of factors like climate-change, poverty, inadequate control behavior, infection and prevention externalities, parasite resistance etc. This research project digs into the demand-side of the health problem, considers the "externality" dimension to prevention, and primarily asks the question: how do individuals in developing countries view competing disease-control (prevention) measures, viz. a publicly-administered community-level malaria control measure as against private preventive choices. A theoretical model is developed to help explore the public-private interplay of health risks of malaria. The malaria-endemic regions of Kolkata (India) and its rural fringes comprise the site for an empirical investigation. A field survey (Malaria Risk and Prevention Survey, October-December, 2011) incorporating a mix of stated and revealed preference techniques of health valuation is implemented. Risk-perceptions of respondents are elicited using a measurable visual-aid and individuals' perceived valuations of health-risk reductions, randomly offered with the public and private health treatments, are empirically ascertained. Using a Likelihood Ratio Test on the structural risk parameters, it is seen that individuals’ valuations of health risk reductions are the same across the private and public treatments. The comparative valuation iv exercise, thus, corroborates the externality dimension to malaria control, calling for greater public action to combat malaria. The viability of such a scaled-up public malaria program, in the context of Kolkata, is discussed by comparing the public treatment willingness to pay estimates with the annual estimated costs that the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, the civic body in the city of Kolkata, maintains on account of vector control. Results from the comparative valuation exercises also support the idea that private prevention is generally responsive to prevention costs, indicating the importance of price incentives to induce greater prevention. The issues of health valuation and price sensitivity are further explored across various split-samples differentiated on the basis of socio-economic attributes, disease exposure, actual prevention efforts and perceived malaria risks of survey respondents. Such auxiliary exercises help analyze the valuation question in greater depth, and generate policy insights into the potential factors that shape private prevention behavior.

[pt] A presente dissertação de mestrado tem como proposta analisar o fenômeno da desigualdade social, sobretudo aquela que aflige os grupos mais vulneráveis da nossa sociedade, problemas este tradicionalmente caracterizado como um fato social e transmutar tal aporia numa questão jurídica. Para tanto, utiliza-se do Pacto Internacional sobre Diretos Econômicos, Sociais e Culturais de 1966 e de sua previsão que veda a discriminação na fruição dos direitos objetos do referido pacto. Como efeito, a discriminação no desfrute desses direitos, mesmo que involuntária, é uma infração ao dever de não discriminação, dever este que é de aplicabilidade imediata e não sujeito a considerações de ordem orçamentária. Posteriormente, é analisado o caráter neoliberal do Regime de Recuperação Fiscal ao qual aderiu o Estado do Rio de Janeiro, sendo pontuadas as repercussões deste regime excepcionalíssimo para o proveito dos direitos socioeconômicos e culturais numa situação de recrudescimento do conflito pelo dispêndio público. Após, abordam-se exemplos de políticas implementadas de modo geral a assegurar a fruição dos direitos socioeconômicos e culturais, bem como de políticas para verificar se as políticas implementadas pelo Estado são ou não discriminatórias. Por fim, é apresentada tanto uma sugestão de estrutura de verificação das políticas a serem implementadas em âmbito estadual quanto enumeradas iniciativas inovadoras em âmbito internacional que combinam baixo custo orçamentário para sua implementação e alto impacto sobre o público-alvo dos programas. / [en] This Masters Dissertation aims to analyze the phenomena of social inequality, especially that which affects the most vulnerable strata of our society. Problems such as these are traditionally characterized as social facts. However, it is this Dissertation s purpose to approach the issue as a legal matter. To that end, this work will have recourse to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966, and its provision which prohibits discrimination in the recognition of the rights it sets forth. In effect, the discrimination in the fruition of such rights, even when unintentional, constitutes a breach of the duty of non-discrimination, a duty of immediate applicability and not subject to budgetary considerations. Afterwards, the neoliberal character of the Fiscal Recovery Regime to which the State of Rio de Janeiro adhered will be analyzed. Remarks will then be made on the repercussions of this overly exceptional regime on the enjoyment of socioeconomic and cultural rights in an environment afflicted by the escalation of disputes on public expenditure. Furthermore, examples of policies implemented with a general objective to ensure the fruition of socioeconomic and cultural rights, as well as policies aiming to verify whether the policies adopted by the State are discriminatory or not, will be presented. At last, a proposal of State level policy verifying structure will be put forward, and several innovative initiatives in the international ambit, which combine low budget cost for implementation and high effectiveness over the target demographic, will be evaluated.

Ayant pour ambition de « rendre la parole » aux populations déshéritées de la ville de Pikine, banlieue de la capitale sénégalaise, Débat local est l’émission politique interactive de la radio communautaire Air’Jeunes fondée à la fin des années quatre-vingt-dix à l’initiative des associations de jeunes de la région dakaroise avec le soutien d’une grande ONG canadienne. Cette thèse étudie les usages de cette émission par les citoyens locaux dans les trois domaines principaux où les militants et promoteurs de la démocratie participative s’attachent à développer des dispositifs d’action citoyenne visant à corriger les défauts et insuffisances du gouvernement représentatif au regard de l’idéal démocratique : la place des citoyens dans le système de production des biens publics locaux, les relations symboliques entre les élus et les électeurs et l’espace public de débat sur les politiques publiques et l’action des représentants. À partir d’une étude de terrain à caractère ethnographique menée en trois séquences de 2006 à 2011 dans les studios de la radio et sur les lieux d’écoute de l’émission, il apparaît que si l’émission a permis à des formes de contestation du pouvoir local de s’exprimer publiquement sans médiation, la réalisation du projet originel de l’émission s’est heurtée à un contexte local défavorable marqué par l’absence de moyens donnés aux élus locaux pour exercer leurs compétences récemment décentralisées et par un journalisme politique local polarisé autour de deux formes dominantes laissant peu de place au débat argumenté : le journalisme antagonique des grands groupes privés et de la petite presse du secteur informel et le journalisme légitimiste du groupe public. En dépit de leur attachement militant au projet, les responsables de la radio et les animateurs de l’émission dont les origines sociales et les formations scolaires les tenaient très éloignés des formes de consommation des biens informationnels des Pikinois ainsi que des activités des associations informelles de quartier très vivantes dans la banlieue dakaroise ont progressivement cédé aux forces d’attraction qu’exerçaient les radios privées ordinaires sur leur vision de leur avenir professionnel personnel et, corrélativement, sur leur pratique journalistique. / Aspiring to “give a voice” to the poor people of Pikine, a suburb of the Senegalese capital, “Local Debate” is an interactive political programme of the community radio Air’Jeunes, created in the late nineties at the initiative of youth associations in the Dakar region with support from a major Canadian NGO. This thesis explores the use of this programme by local citizens in three main areas where activists and proponents of participatory democracy are committed to developing citizen action mechanisms, aiming to correct the defects and shortcomings under the democratic ideal of representative government: the role of citizens in the production system of local public goods, symbolic relationships between elected leaders and electors, and the public space for debate on public policies and the actions of representatives. Based on an ethnographic field study conducted in three phases between 2006 and 2011 in the radio production studio and the show’s listening sites, it appears that, even if the programme has enabled forms of contestation of local authority to be voiced publicly without mediation, the realisation of the original project faced an unfavourable local context marked by the lack of resources given to local officials to exercise their newly decentralised powers and a local political journalism polarised around two dominant forms, leaving little room for debate: the antagonistic journalism of big private groups and small informal press, and the legitimising journalism of the public service group. Despite their militant commitment to the project, radio staff and hosts whose social origins and educational backgrounds distance them from the forms of consumption of information goods and activities of Pikine’s inhabitants, as well as the dynamic activities of informal neighbourhood associations in the suburbs of Dakar, have gradually yielded to forces of attraction exercised by mainstream private radios, influencing their vision of their professional future and, in turn, their journalistic practice .

Diese Dissertation besteht aus drei Aufsätzen, welche die Effekte von Geld- und Fiskalpolitiken für die Makroökonomie untersuchen. Der erste Aufsatz analysiert, wie das Verhalten der Inflation nach z.B. geldpolitischen Veränderungen erklärt werden kann. Mankiw und Reis (2002) propagieren klebrige Information als eine Alternative zu Calvo klebrigen Preisen, um drei konventionelle Sichtweisen über die Inflation zu modellieren. Ich verwende ein DSGE Modell mit klebriger Information und vergleiche es mit Calvo klebrigen Preisen mit dynamischer Inflationsindexierung wie in Christiano et al. (2005). Ich zeige, dass beide Modelle in meinem DSGE Rahmen gleich gut geeignet sind, die konventionellen Sichtweisen zu erklären. Der zweite Aufsatz untersucht, wie sich das Verhalten von Haushalten und Firmen in den USA und EU-15 infolge von Steuerveränderungen anpasst. Mittels eines neoklassischen Wachstumsmodells zeigt sich, dass die USA und EU-15 auf der linken Seite der Lohn- und Kapitalsteuer Laffer Kurve liegen. Die EU-15 befindet sich jedoch viel näher an der rutschigen Steigung als die USA. Eine dynamische Scoring-Analyse zeigt, dass Steuersenkungen in der EU-15 stärker selbstfinanzierend sind als in den USA. Es folgt, dass es in der EU-15 grössere Anreize durch Steuersenkungen als in den USA gibt. Der dritte Aufsatz analysiert, ob die Fiskalpolitik Steuerreformen vor deren Implementierung vorankündigen soll, um die Wohlfahrt zu maximieren. Domeij und Klein (2005) zeigen, dass Vorankündigung einer optimalen Steuerreform mit Wohlfahrtskosten verbunden ist. Ich prüfe diese Behauptung unter zusätzlicher Berücksichtigung von öffentlichen Gütern und Kapital nach. Ich zeige, dass nutzenbringende und produktive Staatsausgaben die Wohlfahrtskosten durch Vorankündigungen höchstwahrscheinlich reduzieren. Es zeigt sich weiter, dass kurzfristige Konfiszierung und/oder Subvention von Kapital und Löhnen nicht wichtig für die Wohlfahrsgewinne einer hinreichend vorangekündigten Steuerreform sind. / This dissertation consists of three essays which investigate the economic implications of monetary and fiscal policies on the macroeconomy. The first essay focuses on the question: how can we explain the behavior of inflation in response to e.g. monetary policy changes? Mankiw and Reis (2002) propose sticky information as an alternative to Calvo sticky prices to model three conventional views about inflation. We use a fully-fledged DSGE model with sticky information and compare it to Calvo sticky prices, allowing also for dynamic inflation indexation as in Christiano et al. (2005). We find that both models do equally well in our DSGE framework in delivering the conventional views. The second essay analyzes the question: how does the behavior of households and firms in the US compared to the EU-15 adjust if fiscal policy changes taxes? Using a calibrated neoclassical growth model we show that the US and the EU-15 are located on the left side of their labor and capital tax Laffer curves, but the EU-15 being much closer to the slippery slopes than the US. A dynamic scoring analysis shows that tax cuts in the EU-15 are much more self-financing than in the US. We conclude that there are higher incentive effects in the EU-15 compared to the US in response to tax cuts. Finally, the third essay focuses on the question: should fiscal policy pre-announce tax reforms before their implementation from a welfare point of view? Domeij and Klein (2005) show that pre-announcement of an optimal tax reform is costly in terms of welfare. We reexamine their claim by taking two additional features of government spending into account: public goods and public capital. We show that valuable and productive government spending is likely to reduce the welfare costs of preannouncement. As a further contribution, we show that short-run confiscation and/or subsidy of capital and labor income is not important for the welfare gains of pre-announced reforms with sufficiently long pre-announcement duration.