220 million Americans crowd together in the 3% of the country that is urban. 35 million people live in the vast metropolis of Tokyo, the most productive urban area in the world.  Meer

What is good government? Why do some governments fail? How do you implement political accountability in practice? What incentives do you need to put in place to ensure that politicians and public servants act in the public interest and not their own?  Meer

Social security systems are being reviewed and changed in many countries around the world. This nontechnical book considers some of the key policy issues for design of a social security reform, as well as reviewing much of the academic literature on the positive and normative aspects of social security.  Meer

Environmental policy is high on the political agenda in many countries. Considering the various dimensions of environmental quality as public goods, Sandmo identifies the failures of the market mechanism in the face of environmental problems and shows how economic policy should be designed to overcome them.  Meer

This book surveys recent developments in public economics by taking as a case-study the proposals for a basic income/flat tax scheme. It discusses various approaches to taxation and presents a framework for a system that would affect both personal income and the social security system, replacing the one by a flat-rate income tax and the other by a guaranteed income.  Meer

What is good government? Why do some governments fail ? How do you implement political accountability in practice? What incentives do you need to put in place to ensure that politicians and public servants act in the public interest and not their own?  Meer