Search results for "jel:D72"
showing 8 items of 8 documents
Conflict, Evolution, Hegemony, and the Power of the State
2013
In a model of evolution driven by conflict between societies more powerful states have an advantage. When the influence of outsiders is small we show that this results in a tendency to hegemony. In a simple example in which institutions differ in their “exclusiveness” we find that these hegemonies will be inefficiently “extractive” in the sense of having inefficiently high taxes, high compensation for state officials, and low welfare.
Construction de logements sociaux et stratégies électorales locales,
2013
Our article examines if local incumbents’ choices regarding social housing construction are influenced by strategic electoral considerations, which might foil the French state’s efforts in favour of greater social mixity. By constructing a probabilistic voting model which integrates a partially mobile population, we show that such strategic considerations let the political choices of neighbouring municipalities become interdependent, and that the intensity of the resulting strategic inter-actions varies in function of the local population’s mobility. These propositions are confirmed by our empirical analysis concerning social housing construction in the Greater Lyon region. A local incumben…
NASH EQUILIBRIA IN A MODEL OF MULTIPRODUCT PRICE COMPETITION: AN ASSIGNMENT PROBLEM
2003
We study the market interaction of a finite number of single-product firms and a representative buyer, where the buyer consumes bundles of these goods. The buyers' value function determines their willingness to pay for subsets of goods. We show that subgame perfect Nash-equilibrium outcomes are solutions of the linear relaxation of an integer programming assignment problem and that they always exits. The (subgame perfect) Nash-equilibrium price set is characterized by the Pareto frontier of the associated dual problem's projection on the firms' price vectors. We identify the Nash-equilibrium prices for monotonic buyers' value functions and, more importantly, we show that some central soluti…
Reforms and decentralization: friends or foes
2013
Systemic concerns about markets, capitalism and the role of the state in the economy are salient again. Relatively large-scale reforms of economic and social arrangements are seriously considered. Historical experience suggests that reforms of that kind are sometimes associated with important changes in institutional arrangements pertaining to political decentralization. To explore the relationship between economic reforms and decentralization, the paper argues that a reform has two dimensions. It is a process and it is a design. The organization of the paper is inspired by that distinction. For economists, it seems natural to reason in terms of design -- that is, to perceive reform as the …
A System Dynamics Approach to Analysing the Effect of Clientelism on Public Organizations Performance in Italy
2010
This paper tries to analyse the effects of political clientelism on the performance of public utilities and organizations in Italy. Shortly, clientelism consists in a series of reciprocal convenience-based relationships between politicians and individuals, commanding unequal resources and involving mutually beneficial transactions in terms of economic, social and political consequences. The motivation of this research stems from the fact that analysing the effect of clientelism may contribute in (1) improving the quality of electoral strategies and the resulting public policies and (2) managing the performance of public organizations according to a sustainable perspective. Hence, the key is…
Determinantes Políticos de las Transferencias Discrecionales. Evidencia de la Provincia de Córdoba, Argentina
2005
Este trabajo examina el impacto de la táctica política en la distribución de las transferencias de fondos discrecionales entre el gobierno provincial y los municipios. Se analizan las diferentes teorías basadas en modelos partidistas y no partidistas, contrastando las mismas empíricamente para los municipios de la provincia de Córdoba, en Argentina. Los resultados obtenidos permiten confirmar la existencia de factores políticos y económicos como determinantes de la asignación de las transferencias discrecionales y si bien ninguno de los modelos teóricos explicados se ven reflejados en sentido estricto, sí se observa una combinación entre ellos. This work examines the impact of political tac…
Seat Competitiveness and Redistricting: Evidence from Voting on Municipal Mergers
2013
We analyze how (anticipated) changes in the competitiveness of the seats of municipal councilors affect their voting behavior over municipal mergers. The competitiveness of the seats changes because the merger changes the composition of political competitors and the number of available seats in the next election. We use this variation for identification and find that the smaller the increase in the competitiveness of a councilor's seat, the more likely he is to vote for the merger. These effects are not related to the behavioral responses of the voters, but arise from the councilors’ desire to avoid electoral competition.
Decentralization as an incentive scheme when regional differences are large
2010
It has been suggested that large regional differences could be an obstacle to that part of the political accountability of office-holders which is based on yardstick competition among governments. The paper addresses that question and concludes that the obstacle is not too serious in general. The second part of the paper is devoted to the persistent economic underperformance of some regions in countries such as Germany, Italy and (with regard to regions overseas) France. How is it that the mechanism of yardstick competition induces a convergence of economic performance among European Union member countries, even those particularly poor initially, but fails to induce all the underperforming …