Showing 1 - 10 of 157
The Paper studies the relative merits of direct and representative legislation in a setting where voters are uncertain both with respect to the likely consequences of different policies and with respect to the political preferences of their fellow citizens. Under representative legislation, the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005791286
We propose a normative theory of the number of representatives based on a stylized model of a representative democracy. We derive a simple formula, a "square-root theory" which gives the number of representatives in parliament as proportional to the square root of total population. Simple...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005791717
Governments do not have perfect information regarding the priorities and the needs of different groups in the economy. This lack of knowledge opens the door for different groups to lobby the government in order to receive the government’s support. We set up a model of hierarchical contests and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005497910
This paper studies fiscal federalism when regions differ in voters’ ability to monitor public officials. We develop a model of political agency in which rent-seeking politicians provide public goods to win support from heterogeneously informed voters. In equilibrium, voter information...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011084457
The extent of political and fiscal centralization in Russia has experienced dramatic changes since the end of the Soviet era. The heavily centralized, both politically and economically, federal structures became dysfunctional and unstable until the introduction of the Budget and Tax Codes over...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011084505
We show that space matters in designing the optimal provision of local public goods (LPGs). Geography imposes particular institutional structure of local governments due to the overlapping of market areas associated with different LPGs. The optimum can be decentralized through local governments...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005656169
We use variation in oil output among Brazilian municipalities to investigate the effects of resource windfalls. We find muted effects of oil through market channels: offshore oil has no effect on municipal non-oil GDP or its composition, while onshore oil has only modest effects on non-oil GDP...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008509470
Laws that work well in a rule-of-law country may produce unexpected outcomes in a corrupt environment. We argue that the legal system in Russia is faulted by the capture of regional divisions of arbitrage courts. We analyse the consequences of this for the efficiency of Russian bankruptcy law....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005656302
Regional flows of federal taxes and transfers within the United States and Canada are used to analyse long-term fiscal flows (the redistributive element) and short-term responses to regional business cycles (the stabilization element). In the United States, long-run flows amount to 22 cents in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005661584
This paper analyzes the redistributive effects of the EU budget during the period 1986-97 and advances a proposal for setting member countries' budgetary balances in a manner consistent with a simple equity criterion based on relative income per capita.
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005791627