Showing 1 - 10 of 536
The possibility of treason by a close associate has been a nightmare of most dictators throughout history. Better informed viziers are also better able to discriminate among potential plotters, and this makes them more risky subordinates for the dictator. To avoid this, dictators – especially...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005123685
The international financial system has been the subject of much debate following the financial crises of the 1990s. While many reforms have been proposed for and implemented by mostly developing countries, few changes have been made to the international financial system itself. Fundamentally,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005504421
The modern theory of agrarian organization has studied how the economic environment determines organizational form under the assumption of stable property rights to land. The political economy literature has modeled the endogenous determination of property rights. In this Paper we propose a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005504643
In this paper we study the political issues associated with reform in the European labour market. We first discuss the role played by labour market rigidities in European society, and argue that reform is a difficult task because many regulations and rigidities benefit the majority of the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005497719
This paper starts from the observation that despite their very high levels of unemployment, major European countries have devoted few resources to reducing it. This suggests that there is little political concern about high unemployment. I develop a model where the government tries to increase...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005498035
This paper proposes a dynamic politico-economic theory of fiscal policy in a world comprising a set of small open economies, whose driving force is the intergenerational conflict over debt, taxes, and public goods. Subsequent generations of voters choose fiscal policy through repeated elections....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011083405
We study how rich shareholders can use their economic power to deregulate firms that they own, thus skewing the income distribution towards themselves. Agents differ in productivity and choose how much labor to supply. High productivity agents also own shares in the productive sector and thus...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011083884
Initially, voting rights were limited to wealthy elites providing political support for stock markets. The franchise expansion induces the median voter to provide political support for banking development as this new electorate has lower financial holdings and benefits less from the uncertainty...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011084251
We study the mechanisms through which the adoption of the Euro delayed, rather than advanced, economic reforms in the Euro zone periphery and led to the deterioration of important institutions in these countries. We show that the abandonment of the reform process and the institutional...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011084343
Competition between opposing lobbies is an important factor in the endogenous determination of trade policy. This paper investigates empirically the consequences of lobbying competition between upstream and downstream producers for trade policy. The theoretical structure underlying the empirical...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10004991547