Search results for "rent-seeking"

Decentralization and growth: what if the cross-jurisdiction approach had met a dead end?

2013

International audience; The relationship between decentralization and economic growth is generally studied from a perspective stressing universal or quasi-universal regularities across jurisdictions. That approach has generated many insights but seems to reach its limits. The paper explains why it allows contrasting positions with regard to the benefits of decentralization even among proponents of free and competitive markets. And it seems from the empirical literature that no robust and economically significant cross-jurisdiction relation between decentralization and economic performance or growth, except perhaps their independence, has been found. The absence of a relation valid across ju…

Not all group members are created equal: heterogeneous abilities in inter-group contests

2020

AbstractCompetition between groups is ubiquitous in social and economic life, and typically occurs between groups that are not created equal. Here we experimentally investigate the implications of this general observation on the unfolding of symmetric and asymmetric competition between groups that are either homogeneous or heterogeneous in the ability of their members to contribute to the success of the group. Our main finding is that relative to the benchmark case in which two homogeneous compete against each other, heterogeneity within groups per se has no discernable effect on competition, while introducing heterogeneity between groups leads to a significant intensification of conflict a…

The assignment of powers in an open-ended European Union

2003

Presented at CESIFO Conference “A Constitution for the EU”, February 2003; International audience; A major characteristic of the European Union is its transitional or evolving nature, in particular with regard to the assignment of powers between the two main levels of government. More precisely, under current constitutional arrangements, this evolving nature takes the form of an integration process which tends to be monotonous, that is, which can only with great difficulty be reversed. The paper is mainly devoted to the explanation of how this comes about and what effects this has on other features of the process. As a concluding remark, however, it suggests that an additional criterion for…

Horizontal competition in multilevel governmental settings

2013

28 pages; Governments situated on the same level of a multi-level governmental system compete with each other as well as with governments placed higher or lower. This paper is concerned with horizontal competition only. It discusses both competition based on the mobility of agents and competition based on comparisons of performance across jurisdictions - i.e., yardstick competition. With regard to the first kind, the focus is on the capacity of governments and voters to decide policies in spite of the mobility of agents. Some attention is also given to non-standard mechanisms in which mobility is manipulated so as to change the structure of the electorate. The paper considers two forms of h…

How significant is yardstick competition among governments? Three reasons to dig deeper

2013

22 pages; The significance of yardstick competition among governments is now confirmed with regard to fiscal variables. This is an important result but the significance of the mechanism must also be sought in a context broader than that of fiscal federalism and without limitation to relations and processes fully observable. Three points are made. Even in the case of governments trying to mimic each other over a single variable, additional variables are involved in an important way. Yardstick competition can be latent without being ineffective. Its major effect, then, is to set bounds to the choices that office-holders could think of making. Finally, the mechanism is a hidden albeit essentia…

Sectoral Transformations in Neo-Patrimonial Rentier States: Tourism Development and State Policy in Egypt

2007

This article challenges claims that liberalising state regulated markets in developing countries may induce lasting economic development. The analysis of the rise of tourism in Egypt during the last three decades suggests that the effects of liberalisation and structural adjustment are constrained by the neo-patrimonial character of the Egyptian political system. Since the decline of oil rent revenues during the 1980s tourism development was the optimal strategy to compensate for the resulting fiscal losses. Increasing tourism revenues have helped in coping with macroeconomic imbalances and in avoiding more costly adjustment of traditional economic sectors. Additionally, they provided the p…

Rent Seeking in Public Procurement

2005

Do Rent-Seeking and Interregional Transfers Contribute to Urban Primacy in Sub-Saharan Africa?

2006

We develop an economic geography model in which mobile skilled workers choose between working in the production sector or becoming part of an unproductive political elite. The elite sets tax rates on skilled and unskilled workers to maximize its own welfare by extracting rents, thereby influencing the spatial allocation of production and changing the available range of consumption goods. We show that such behavior increases the likelihood of agglomeration and of urban primacy. In equilibrium, the elite may tax the unskilled workers but will never tax the skilled workers, and there are rural-urban transfers towards the agglomeration. The size of the elite and the magnitude of the tax burden …

Constitutional Implications of electoral assumptions

2001

International audience

Don't tell us: the demand for secretive bahaviour

2009

International audience