We examine the determinants of the EU budget expenditures allocation among different countries. Following previous literature, we consider two alternative explanations for the EU budget distribution: political power vs. 'needs view'. Taking the original data set (1976-2001) from Kauppi and...

We look at the consequences of allowing public health insurance (PuHI) to be voluntary when its coverage can be supplemented in the market. PuHI redistributes with respect to risk and income, and the market is affected by adverse selection. We argue that making PuHI voluntary does not lead to...

We study the political determination of the level of social long-term care insurance when voters also choose private insurance and saving amounts. Agents di§er in income, probability of becoming dependent and of receiving family help. Social insurance redistributes across income and risk...

In 2008, an opposition coalition defeated the Paraguayan Colorado Party, which had been in power for 61 years, including 35 years of the longest dictatorship in South America. Using data of all the public procurement transactions from 2004 through 2011 and the political connections of the 700...

The main purpose of this short paper is to examine how traditional Downsian dynamics (convergence of the parties to the median of the distribution) are altered by the introduction of centrifugal incentives arising from the fact that any motion towards the center induces a lost of votes at the...

We provide an explanation for why estate taxation is surprisingly little used over the world, given the skewness of the estate distribution. Taxing estates implies meddling with intra-family decisions, which may be frown upon by many. At the same time, the concentration of estates means that a...

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...

The main purpose of this paper is to estimate the probability of casting a decisive vote for a class or random electorate models encompassing the celebrated IC and IAC models. The emphasis is on the impact of correlation across votes on the order of magnitude of this event. Our proof techniques...

In this paper, we clarify the relationship between influence/power measurement and utility measurement, the most popular two social objective criteria used when evaluating voting mechanisms. For one particular probabilistic model describing the preferences of the electorate, the so-called...