the motivation and bias of bureaucrats many individuals are motivated to exert effort because they care about their jobs rather than because there are monetary consequences to their actions the intrinsic motivation of bureaucrats is the focus of this paper and three primary results are shown first bureaucrats should be biased second sometimes this bias takes the form of advocating for their clients more than would their principal while in other cases they are more hostile to their interests for a range of bureaucracies those who are biased against clients lead to more efficient outcomes third self selection need not produce the desired bias instead selection to bureaucracies is likely to be bifurcated in the sense that it becomes composed of those who are most preferred by the principal and those who are least preferred

walking with moneylenders the ecology of the uk home collected credit industry the aim of the paper is to assess the role of doorstep credit companies in the delivery of financial services in areas affected by high levels of financial and social exclusion in particular the paper looks at the relationship between agents and customers using two metaphors associated with interaction between different species in an ecological setting namely parasitism and symbiotic mutualism the metaphor of parasitism circulates widely within debates about moneylending in the media and among advocacy groups such as the consumer association that work on behalf of low income individuals and households the metaphor of symbiotic mutualism describes the depiction of the relationship between consumers and moneylenders put forward by the moneylending industry drawing on field work undertaken within moneylending companies this paper argues that the relationship between the agents and customers is cultivated to overcome information asymmetries that is to produce information about customers ability to

the political economy of regulations and trade wine trade 1860 1970 dramatic changes in the 1860 1970 wine trade provide insights on the political economy of regulations and policy instrument choice and trade an invasion of phylloxera in the 1870s turned france from the world s leading exporter to a massive importer of wine and grapes when french production recovered a combination of tariffs safety regulations and quality standards were introduced to protect its french producers causing dramatic changes in global wine and grape production and trade including in spain italy turkey greece algeria tunisia and morocco changes in wine regulations were caused by relative income and loss aversion factors in political economy tariffs were the preferred policy instruments as they directly restrict imports bring in revenues have low transaction costs and are preferred political instruments when there are information imperfections safety regulations and quality standards including labelling and input prohibitions reduce asymmetric information for consumers or undesirable externalities and simultaneously protected domestic producers regulations were often targeted at imported products wine and raisins when tariffs were ineffective or constrained by institutions such as on colonial wine hence tariffs and quality regulations were jointly used in wine policy both as complements and as substitutes in policy design

political economy of public policies insights from distortions to agricultural and food markets the agricultural and food sector is an ideal case for investigating the political economy of public policies many of the policy developments in this sector since the 1950s have been sudden and transformational while others have been gradual but persistent this paper reviews and synthesizes the literature on trends and fluctuations in market distortions and the political economy explanations that have been advanced based on a rich global data set covering a half century of evidence on commodities countries and policy instruments the paper identifies hypotheses that have been explored in the literature on the extent of market distortions and the conditions under which reform may be feasible

economic development institutional change and the political economy of agricultural protection an econometric study of belgium since the 19th century this empirical study uses 100 years of annual data on 11 agricultural commodities from belgium to measure the impact of structural changes coinciding with economic development and changes in political institutions on agricultural protection the analysis shows that changes in agricultural protection are caused by a combination of factors governments have increased protection and support to farmers when world market prices for their commodities fell and vice versa offsetting market effects on producer incomes other economic determinants were the share of the commodities in total consumer expenditures negative effect and in total output of the economy positive effect with belgium a small economy there was no impact of the trade position changes in political institutions have affected agricultural protection democratic reforms which induced a significant shift in the political balance towards agricultural interests such as the introduction of the one man one vote system led to an increase in agricultural protection the integration of belgian agricultural policies in the common agricultural policy in 1968 coincided with an increase in protection ceteris paribus both institutional factors related to changes in access to and information about the decision making at the eu level and structural changes in the agricultural and food economy may explain this effect

when disaster strikes under insurance in australian households in undertaking what we believe is the first national scale study of its kind we provide methodologically transparent statistically robust insights into associations and potential unfolding effects of house and contents under insurance we identify new dimensions in the complex relationship between householders and insurance including the salience of interpersonal and likely institutional trust under insurance is re produced along socio economic and geographical lines with those of lower socio economic status or living in cities more likely to be under insured should a disaster strike such communities are likely to suffer further disadvantage especially if governments continue to shift the responsibility for risk onto households our findings support the observation that insurance can contribute to increasing socio economic urban polarisation in light of natural disasters we conclude by considering how under insurance may contribute to growing urban social stratification as well as how it may produce situated ethical and political responses that exceed neoliberal aspirations

airport pricing congestion tolls lumpy investment and cost recovery abstract in this paper we investigate the relationship between congestion tolls and capacity expansion costs for congestion prone transportation infrastructures with lumpy investment with constant variable costs and social marginal cost pricing this relationship determines the cost recovery status of an infrastructure authority the theoretical model for optimal user charges and the timing of capacity expansion shows that the relative magnitudes of total congestion tolls and total capacity costs in an investment cycle depend on the time pattern of traffic growth a point overlooked in the literature a queuing model is used to conduct a numerical experiment to determine the cost recovery ratios under various time paths of traffic growth

the growth of agricultural protection in europe in the 19th and 20th centuries 1247 johan f m swinnen dramatic changes took place in agricultural policies in europe in the 19th and 20th centuries in the 1860s european nations agreed on a series of trade agreements which spread free trade across the continent in the 1960s european nations concluded an international agreement which spread heavy government intervention and protection against imports across the continent this paper quantifies these changes in protection over the course of a century relates them to changes in policies and offers a political economy explanation for the growth in agricultural protection in europe

optimal road capacity in the presence of unpriced congestion abstract this paper studies how the optimal capacity of a road is affected by a pricing constraint which keeps the toll fixed below its optimal value the answer is found to depend on the value of the price elasticity of travel demand at the second best optimum the pricing constraint lowers the optimal capacity if the price elasticity is sufficiently high but under reasonable assumptions the pricing constraint raises the optimal capacity if the price elasticity is less than the ratio of the consumer price of travel to the private congestion cost at the second best optimum this ratio cannot be less than one

conceptual developments in the economics of transportation an interpretive survey the objective in this paper is to survey the literature in transportation economics exploring two basic themes first the conceptual developments in the analysis of supply and demand which recognizes noteworthy aggregation biases in the empirical work on aggregate data and indicate that a correct analysis of the issues should take place at a highly disaggregated level second the use of these conceptual developments to evaluate efficiency aspects of transportation pricing investment and the impact of government regulation on resource allocation and distribution in the transportation sector it is important to acknowledge that the survey is based on research throughout the world but our institutional perspective and to some extent the topics that are covered is based largely on the u s experience author

causes of u s farm commodity programs this paper i s an attempt to explain variations by commodity in producer protection afforded by farm price support programs since the1930s particularly emphasized are theideas that these programs are essentially income redistributional measures and that given political forces the programs are attempts to redistribute efficiently variables associated with the cost to producers of generating political pressure and the social cost deadweight losses of redistribution are both found to be empirically important copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

low cost insurance schemes in scottish social housing an empirical study of availability and tenants participation the uk has had a long history of market provision of household insurance recent years however have seen a decline in the traditional insurance market distribution channels aimed at low income and or rented sector households the products pricing and method of payment currently offered by insurers have exacerbated the exclusion of many in social housing from this important financial services product research suggests that only 50 per cent of people living in rented or local authority housing insure their contents compared with 93 per cent of homeowners the aim of this paper is to evaluate the degree to which tenants in public sector housing participate in low cost household insurance schemes promoted by their landlord and to assess the reasons behind this level of participation this study suggests that despite value for money schemes being available the take up rates by tenants are low and that the providers of social housing need to be more vigorous and imaginative in their promotion of low cost

lobbying incentives and the pattern of protection in rich and poor countries in seeking to explain why poor countries tend to choose policies that tax agriculture relative to manufacturing while rich countries do the opposite archetypical parameters for a poor agrarian economy and a rich industrial one are inserted in a computable general equilibrium model to simulate the medium term effects on income distribution of policies that distort the relative prices of tradables the model includes a non tradables sector and intermediate inputs realistic features that ensure even greater skewness in the distributional effects of protection than simpler models suggest the magnitude of the results helps explain the tendency for countries to change gradually from taxing to subsidizing agriculture relative to manufacturing as their economies develop the paper draws out the implications of the analysis for agricultural and trade policy reform in the 1990s this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a protectionist bias in majoritarian politics we develop a novel model of campaigns elections and policy making in which the ex ante objectives of national party leaders differ from the ex post objectives of elected legislators this generates a distinction between policy rhetoric and policy reality and introduces an important role for party discipline in the policy making process we identify a protectionist bias in majoritarian politics when trade policy is chosen by the majority delegation and legislators in the minority have limited means to influence choices the parties announce trade policies that favor specific factors and the expected tariff or export subsidy is positive positions and expected outcomes monotonically approach free trade as party discipline strengthens i introduction in a democracy the majority rules often this means that the policies enacted by elected governments reflect the preferences of some citizens more than those of others this feature of democracy commonly known as tyranny of the majority arises in institutional settings in which elected officials represent disproportionately the interests of their own constituents and electees who represent the minority have limited means to influence policy in this paper we argue that tyranny of the majority imparts a protectionist bias to democratic politics this is so even when the average citizen covets free trade and when every citizen has an equal probability of being represented in the policy making process by protection we mean policies that favor quasi fixed factors of production thus protection in our parlance refers both to tariffs that shield import competing industries from foreign competition and subsidies that promote exports the bias refers to the average or expected policy outcome we focus on majoritarian systems in which elected legislators represent geographic regions the existence of a protectionist bias requires only that i national party leaders cannot fully commit their candidates to adopt particular policies if elected ii mem

changing coalitions in value chains and the political economy of agricultural and food policy within this issue of the oxford review of economic policy which focuses on the growing divergence between the agriculture sector and the food sector this paper focuses on how this changing divergence affects the political economy of agricultural and food policies

the economic effects of non optimal pricing and investment policies for substitutable transport facilities a dynamic simulation model of subbstitutable transportation facilities demonstrated the welfare revenue and capacity implications of various non optimal pricing and investment policies applications to a major airport and an urban transportation system an expressway and a subway showed that in both cases the welfare surface surrounding the optimal policy is relatively flat for a substantial range and that existing policies are also on this range for both transportation systems a policy of financial self sufficiency is on this range for the airport but not for the urban transportation system author

indivisibilities economies of scale and optimal subsidy policy for freeways in our 1976 paper herbert mohring thomas pinfold and i attempted to quantify optimal congestion tolls volume capacity ratios and subsidies for freeways in doing so we made the simplifying assumption of perfectly divisible traffic lanes of course freeway lanes are not divisible and with two to four lanes typically provided in each direction the size of the indivisibility is large this paper quantifies optimal freeway characteristics with indivisibilities taken into account we find that failure to account for indivisibilities can lead to

explaining price policy bias in agriculture the calculus of support maximizing politicians a model is developed to explain observed patterns of policy intervention in agriculture we analyze the interaction between political support seeking politicians and supportsupplying citizens society consists of a rural and urban group we determine the effects on transfers of relative group size disparities in income endowments between groups and the deadweight loss of redistribution the framework advanced is an alternative to that of the interest group model and is used to explain for example why the export sectors in developing countries are taxed more and why the united kingdom is less adamant for higher price supports than germany

political institutions and international patterns of agricultural protection this paper analyzes the influence of political systems and rights in patterns of agricultural protection across commodities countries and over time four political systems and a qualitative index of political rights account for differences in political institutions the analysis incorporates the effects of development of constraints on tax collection feasibility and of comparative advantages and terms of trade pluralistic systems are associated with higher agricultural protection levels although in a nonlinear fashion access to pluralism appears to be important although further democratization partly dissipates protection copyright 1994 by mit press

a positive theory of agricultural protection the present paper analyses the political economy of agricultural protection in a general equilibrium framework rational politicians offer protectionist policies in return for political support from their constituency individuals in the economy have different factor endowments politicians exploit these differences in establishing redistributive policies when maximizing political support changes in economic variables such as the urban rural income gap capital intensity the share of agriculture in total output and total employment and the share of food in consumer expenditures affect the political equilibrium policy the analysis concludes that the observed correlation between economic development and agricultural protection is caused by a multiplicity of factors

trading off volatility and distortions food policy during price spikes this paper analyses the trade off between price distortions and reduced volatility when governments intervened in agricultural and food markets during the recent food price spikes we develop a model to derive how much distortions a government would introduce when it cares about price stability in a situation with limited policy options we show that there is a trade off and identify the optimal combination of distortions and stability for given international price shocks and interest groups preferences for stability we compare these theoretical findings with empirical indicators on actual government interventions in staple food markets we find that several countries have been able to reduce short run price volatility in the domestic markets while at the same time allowing structural medium and long term price changes to pass through to producers and consumers however this is not the general case for many countries even when explicitly taking into account the trade off and the benefits of reducing volatility government policies appear far removed from the optimal trade off and there appears to be much room for policy improvement

political reforms rural crises and land tenure in western europe abstract this paper analyzes the origins and causes of the differences and changes in land tenure institutions over more than a century in several western european countries the analysis shows that differences and changes in land tenure are caused by a combination of economic institutional and political factors including the french revolution changes in agricultural profitability voting rights reforms etc significant changes in land tenure regulations resulted from the combination of both improved political representation of tenants in parliament and a severe economic crisis increasing the pressure for reforms empowerment of small tenants and farm workers and increasing their access to and influence on policy making appears to be an important pre condition in order to improve their land tenure rights

the welfare gains from pricing road congestion using automatic vehicle identification and on vehicle meters it is a widely accepted proposition that there is a general underpricing of auto travel in u s cities auto travel imposes a congestion externality with an efficient peak period level estimated at lo 23t per mile on urban freeways small 1121 2 3 but for most urban auto travel tolls consist almost entirely of the gasoline excise tax at a fuel economy of 15 miles per gallon the auto toll implied by the current high gas tax in the united states of 25e per gallon is only 1 7e per mile this is much too low for most peak period travel and even underprices some off peak travel the purpose of this study is to estimate the welfare gains which are possible under different regimes for imposing higher auto tolls in urban areas the three regimes studied are associated with a higher gas tax and systems called automatic vehicle identification and on vehicle metering the framework for the study is a model of a city whose shape is that of a wedge or pie slice of a circle the model s features include

economics of a bottleneck abstract drawing on vickrey amer econ rev 59 251 261 1969 and subsequent literature this paper provides a thorough economic analysis of the simplest bottleneck model of road congestion with peak load demand in the morning rush hour a fixed number of identical individuals one per car must travel from home to work between which is a bottleneck of given capacity the costs of travel include queuing time and schedule delay time early or late for work the frequency distribution of departure times adjusts so that in equilibrium all individuals have the same travel costs the paper extends the previous literature by examining a coarse toll and solving for optimal capacities the application of congestion tolls can generate efficiency gains by altering the frequency distribution of departure times previous estimates of the efficiency gains from congestion tolling are likely to be substantially downward biased because they have ignored this effect