The significance of yardstick competition among governments is now confirmed with regard to fiscal variables. This is an important result but the significance of the mechanism must also be sought in a context broader than that of fiscal federalism and without limitation to relations and...

This is a version, slightly corrected in 2010 with regard to form, of a working paper produced in 1968. Its subject is the problem of the realism of assumptions in economics. It offers an interpretation of Milton Friedman's famous essay of 1953 in which, contrary to most discussions, Friedman's...

Albert Breton and Pierre Salmon argue that the effects of constitutional rules depend on the nature of political competition and on some meta-rules that contain procedures regulating the application and the modification of constitutional rules. They outline two models of competition - electoral...

Centralisation at the level of the European Union takes the form, not so much of increased staff or budget, but of enlarged responsibilities and an increased share in regulation. The paper first reviews possible explanations of that trend that are based on a view of bureaucracy inspired by, or...

Trois thèses sur la relation entre science économique et sens commun sont défendues dans cet essai. La première est que la science économique trouve dans la critique des vérités supposées du sens commun un facteur providentiel de légitimité. A cette fin, elle s'est en partie employée...

In some circumstances, politicians set about altering the composition of their electorate with a view to increasing their chances of being re-elected. A hypothesis along these lines is formulated in the context of local elections and residential mobility. Although the hypothesis is general, an...