Threats of mass revolts could effectively constrain a dictator’s public policy if it were not for the collective-action problem. Mass revolts nevertheless happen, but they follow a stochastic pattern. We describe this pattern in a threshold model of collective action and integrate it into an agency model which demonstrates how mass revolts can impact on a winning coalition’s incentives to keep backing an incumbent dictator.
in: Kurz, H. D., Faccarello, G. (eds.), Handbook of the History of Economic Analysis – Great Economists Since Petty and Boisguilbert, Vol. 1, Edward Elgar, 2016.
Seit 1966 decken Ergänzungsleistungen (EL) zur AHV und IV vorhandene Lücken zwischen Renteneinkommen und Existenzminimum. Statt mit der Giesskanne werden damit effektiv und gezielt Bedürftige unterstützt. Von der Öffentlichkeit und der Politik lange kaum wahrgenommen, entwickelten die EL allerdings eine weit über dem Wirtschaftswachstum liegende Ausgabendynamik.
We develop a model of insurrection markets and integrate the youth bulge as measured by the relative youth cohort size. As youth-specific characteristics we define the young person’s attitude toward revolutionary groups and the government, the degree of risk aversion and the relative productivity of young people on the insurrection market as compared to the official labor market.
Transnational regulatory networks play important roles in multi-level regulatory regimes, as e.g, the European Union. In this paper we analyze the role of regulatory networks from the perspective of the economic theory of legal federalism. Often sophisticated intermediate institutional solutions between pure centralisation and pure decentralisation can help to solve complex trade off problems between the benefits and problems of centralised and decentralised solutions.
The theoretical literature on fiscal federalism has identified several channels through which government decentralization could affect economic growth. Much of the literature focuses on the efficiency aspects of a decentralized provision of public services, but decentralization may also increase growth by raising the ability of the political system to innovate and carry out reforms. In contrast, some authors argue that decentralization increases corruption and government inefficiency, and thus may diminish growth. Given this theoretical ambiguity, several studies have attempted to identify the effect of decentralization on economic growth empirically over the last two decades. We review and conduct a meta-analysis of this empirical literature. Based on our analysis, we point out open questions and discuss possible ways to answer them.
Formal fiscal rules have been introduced in many countries throughout the world. While most studies focus on the intra-jurisdictional effects of fiscal rules, vertical effects on the finances of other levels of government have yet to be explored thoroughly. This paper investigates the influence of Swiss cantonal debt brakes on municipal finances during the years 1980‐2011 by examining aggregated and disaggregated local data. A Difference‐in‐Differences estimation (two‐way fixed effects) provides little evidence that budget constraints at the cantonal level affect average municipal finances and fiscal decentralization.
Recently, political economists have started to apply behavioral economics insights to the study of political processes, thereby re-establishing a unified methodology. This paper surveys the current state of the emerging field of “behavioral political economy” and considers the scope for further research.