It is a constant topic of debate how the European Union (EU) spends the money it collects from its member states. This paper supports the idea that the EU budget battle involves one-shot games that have persistent impacts on the budget allocations. In one way or the other, the member states are...

This paper evaluates the determination of receipts from EU budget by considering a richer institutional structure than in earlier studies. We assume that the member states have self-interested objectives in CM trying to minimize their contributions within the given framework of the EU budget...

This paper assesses the current distribution of voting power in the EU Council of Ministers in terms of fairness. The aim of this paper is three-fold. First, we define fairness in the European context and discuss the potential definitions of the European Union; a state, an association of states...

The EU declares to provide support for the rural and poor regions of its member states. However, recent research shows that past EU budget allocations (in EU-15) can largely be explained by measures of the distribution of voting power in the Council of Ministers deciding on the bulk of EU...

The paper deals with aspects of national and supranational influence in the European Union. The aim of this paper is three-fold. First, it deals with the relationship between the Council and Commission by applying the standard measures of voting power of cooperative games. It then extends the...

We examine national effects on the common policies of the European Union (EU). The paper establishes a difference between national influence on voting outcomes and policies. It is assumed that policies of the EU are public goods and Holler's public good power index is applied. The method is...

Two groups of voters of known sizes disagree over a single binary decision to be taken by simple majority. Individuals have different, privately observed intensities of preferences and before voting can buy or sell votes among themselves for money. We study the implication of such trading for...

This Paper analyses strategic bargaining between two agents each of whom negotiates on behalf of a principal. The principals face uncertainty about the bargaining skills of their agents as measured by the agents' abilities to assess the opponent's preferences. Agents then have an incentive to...

This Paper analyses bargaining between the European Parliament (EP) and the Council of Ministers (CM) in the Conciliation Committee with the aim of evaluating both institutions' power in the European Union's codecision procedure. In contrast to other studies, which use power indices or simple...

By offering or choosing a contract the informed agent might reveal information to the principal which could be used for immediate renegotiation. This is discussed in an axiomatic approach. We show that if, given the revealed information, there exists a contract which is preferred by everyone,...