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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Colin Wren
The paper analyses the existence and efficiency of discretionary industrial assistance schemes under asymmetric information between an uninformed government and a uniform distribution of firms with differing productivities. Discretionary assistance allows the government to scrutinise projects in an effort to learn the type to reduce the 'informational rents' of automatic assistance, where firms take up any contract on offer. Two discretionary grant schemes are analysed, which either exclude 'non-additional' projects or reduce the assistance to the minimum necessary for a project to proceed. The paper finds the conditions under which discretionary assistance exists and is more efficient than automatic assistance.
Author(s): Wren CM
Publication type: Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstract)
Publication status: Published
Conference Name: Royal Economic Society Annual Conference
Year of Conference: 2003
Pages: no. 222
Date deposited: 08/01/2008
Publisher: Royal Economic Society
URL: http://ideas.repec.org/p/ecj/ac2003/222.html
