governmental behavior in representative democracy a synthesis of the theoretical literature what is the impact of bureaucratic behaviors on tax rates what is preferable a bureaucrat or a partisan politician does a flypaper effect occur when lobby groups influence public policies this article tries to answer these questions by analyzing and comparing six different models of public choice 1 the median voter model 2 the leviathan model 3 the slack maximizing model 4 a general model of bureaucracy 5 the partisan politicians model and 6 a general model of lobbying among several results it is shown that the median voter s income and tax share almost always play a significant role in the design of the public good tax package even if the government does not explicitly try to maximize the median voter s utility the article also provides a synthesis of the positive analysis of the flypaper effect

the logic of institutional preferences german electoral law as a social choice outcome institutions determine the results of social decision processes yet institutions are themselves endogenous products of earlier social choices this paper explores the hypothesis that participants in the choice of institutions seek alternatives that favor their desired policies the choice of institutions can be analyzed in terms of bargaining between individuals or parties where preferences derive from preferences over policy and bargaining is structured by existing institutions this approach is used to study the choice of an electoral system in germany after world war ii the hypothesis that parties choose electoral institutions to maximize their future policy influence explains both the adoption of proportional representation in 1949 and the switch to a two vote ballot in 1953

electoral politics and the executive veto a predictive theory we argue that winner take all voting in states and the unequal distribution of electoral votes across states in presidential elections makes incumbent presidents rationally place more weight on the preferences of voters in closely contested larger states when making policy decisions this hypothesis is tested by examining whether presidential veto decisions are influenced by the floor votes of senators from these electorally crucial states in a pooled sample of 325 individual bills from 1970 through 1988 we find significant evidence of this behavior by incumbent presidents

the political economics of redistribution inequality and tax avoidance a central result in the political economy of taxation is that the degree of redistribution is positively linked to income inequality however empirical evidence supporting such a relationship turns out to be mixed this paper shows how the different empirical reactions can be rationalized within a simple model of tax avoidance and costly tax enforcement by focusing on structure induced equilibrium in which taxpayers vote over the size of the income tax and the level of tax enforcement we show that more inequality may well reduce the extent of redistribution depending on two opposing effects the standard political effect and a negative tax base effect working through increases in the average level of tax avoidance and the share of enforcement expenditures in total tax revenue

antebellum tariff politics regional coalitions and shifting economic interests abstract throughout u s history import tariffs have been put on a sustained downward path in only two instances from the early 1830s until the civil war and from the mid 1930s to the present this paper analyzes the political economy of tariff reductions in the antebellum period tariff politics was highly sectional the north supported high tariffs the south favored low tariffs and the west was a swing region in the 1820s a coalition between the north and west raised tariffs by exchanging votes on import duties for spending on internal improvements president andrew jackson delinked these issues by vetoing several internal improvements bills the nullification crisis led to the compromise tariff of 1833 which phased out tariffs above 20 percent over a 9 year period by this time transportation improvements gave the west access to foreign markets giving the region a stake with the south in maintaining a low tariff equilibrium thus the west s changing position on trade policy helps explain the

multilateral negotiations a spatial analysis of the arab israeli dispute a model for forecasting political choices and for explaining the perceptual conditions that lead to those choices is delineated the model based on the median voter theorem and on the axioms of expected utility maximization is applied to the prospects for a multilateral peace conference in the middle east the analysis helps provide insights into the motivations behind recent actions by leaders in the soviet union the united states jordan the palestine liberation organization and israel

line item veto where is thy sting roponents of giving the president the authority to use a line item veto argue that the institutional change is needed to limit special interest legislation and restrain spending opponents respond that it would grant too much added power to the president thereby upsetting the delicate balance wisely crafted by the founding fathers this article focuses on the presumption evidently shared by both sides in the debate that adoption of item veto authority will have significant consequences in terms of budget outcomes and the distribution of power 1 curiously there presently exists little empirical support for the presumption that item veto authority is important most studies comparing states with various types of veto authority have failed to detect significant effects associated with item veto additional tests of our own are consistent with these results after reviewing the empirical evidence we reconsider the alleged effects of item veto authority by seating the popular depiction in an explicit model of the budgetary process formal modeling exposes logical inconsistencies contained in popular veto discourse further the model makes clear that the predicted consequences of item veto commonly projected as ubiquitous in fact arise only in select settings

bicameralism and its consequences for the internal organization of legislatures theories of organization of legislatures have mainly focused on the u s congress explaining why committee systems emerge there but not explaining variance in organization across legislatures of different countries to analyze the effects of different constitutional features on the internal organization of legislatures we adopt a vote buying model and consider the incentives to delegate decision rights in a game among legislative chambers we show how presidential veto power and bicameral separation can encourage a legislative chamber to create internal veto players or supermajority rules while a unicameral structure can encourage legislators to delegate power to a leader

capital budgets borrowing rules and state capital spending abstract this paper compares the level and composition of government spending in u s states that maintain separate budgets for capital and operating expenditures with that in states that employ unified budgets it also investigates the effects of pay as you go financing rules for capital projects the empirical findings suggest that states with separate capital budgets spend more on public capital projects than comparable states with unified budgets there is no evidence that the presence or absence of a capital budget affects the level of non capital spending pay as you go requirements for financing capital projects are associated with lower levels of both capital and non capital spending

fuel taxes an important instrument for climate policy abstract this article shows that fuel taxes serve a very important role for the environment and that we risk a backlash of increased emissions if they are abolished fuel taxes have restrained growth in fuel demand and associated carbon emissions although fuel demand is large and growing our analysis shows that it would have been much higher in the absence of domestic fuel taxes people often assert that fuel demand is inelastic but there is strong research evidence showing the opposite the price elasticity is in fact quite high but only in the long run in the short run it may be quite inelastic which has important implications for policy makers had europe not followed a policy of high fuel taxation but had low us taxes then fuel demand would have been twice as large hypothetical transport demand in the whole oecd area is calculated for various tax scenarios and the results show that fuel taxes are the single most powerful climate policy instrument implemented to date yet this fact is not usually given due attention in the debate

what are the key drivers of mac curves a partial equilibrium modelling approach for the uk marginal abatement cost mac curves are widely used for the assessment of costs related to co2 emissions reduction in environmental economics as well as domestic and international climate policy several meta analyses and model comparisons have previously been performed that aim to identify the causes for the wide range of mac curves most of these concentrate on general equilibrium models with a focus on aspects such as specific model type and technology learning while other important aspects remain almost unconsidered including the availability of abatement technologies and level of discount rates this paper addresses the influence of several key parameters on mac curves for the united kingdom and the year 2030 a technology rich energy system model uk markal is used to derive the mac curves the results of this study show that mac curves are robust even to extreme fossil fuel price changes while uncertainty around the choice of the discount rate the availability of key abatement technologies and the demand level were singled out as the most important influencing factors by using a different model type and studying a wider range of influencing factors this paper contributes to the debate on the sensitivity of mac curves

the constitutional political economy of gordon tullock this paper surveys gordon tullock s contributions to constitutional political economy his first major contribution was his joint project with james buchanan on liberal constitutional design the explicitly constitutional analysis of the calculus was followed by a series of papers and books that focused on the use of resources in conflict including tullock s contributions to the anarchy and rent seeking literatures tullock also pioneered the rational choice based analysis of dictatorships and the relative merits of alternative legal systems topics that has been neglected until fairly recently by most scholars working in the cpe tradition

an empirical example of the condorcet paradox of voting in a large electorate social choice theory suggests that the occurrence of cyclical collective preferences should be a widespread phenomenon especially in large groups of decision makers however empirical research has so far failed to produce evidence of the existence of many real world examples of such and none in large electorates this paper demonstrates the existence of a real cyclical majority in a poll of danish voters preferred prime minister using pair wise comparisons this result is compared with those of a similar poll but by using different voting methods each resulting in different choices the example demonstrates the empirical reality of cyclical collective preferences and the importance of the choice of institutions

the power of the proposal maker in a model of endogenous agenda formation in a distributive setting this study examines a voting procedure for which agenda formation is endogenous it is found not surprisingly that agenda formation is another avenue for strategic manipulation of the voting process and provides the member to first take the floor an asymmetric advantage what is surprising is the degree of this advantage we find that the initial proposal maker earns a share of the fixed resource exceeding 1 for an majority rule and this is regardless of the number of members the voting rule is found to be an effective instrument in at least partially offsetting the power of the proposal maker while maintaining the stability of the voting process

circumventing formal structure through commitment presidential influence and agenda control although the formal institutional structure that defines the temporal order of play in a policy game between the congress and president ought to provide congress with agenda power the president is traditionally treated as the dominant player in this relationship we show that if the president can make clear cut commitments presidential commitment can counter the dominance hierarchy and the complexion of equilibrium outcomes thus the details of political interactions in particular the possibilities for commitment may be as important as the formal specification of institutional structure

why so much stability the impact of agency determined stability in this article i have shown that institutionally induced stability models can be expanded to incorporate the role of implementing agencies acting in conjunction with the legislature by so extending stability models inferences can be made on agency behavior as well as on legislative behavior in particular the expanded model can be used to show how the two actors together determine the ultimate location of stable policies coalition building considerations jurisdictional limitations and the other customs and institutional considerations that restrict the legislature s policy space make it possible for committees to produce a stable policy mandate but these stability inducing arrangements do not directly apply to agencies the policy mandate constrains but does not completely restrict the area of the policy space open to the agency thus legislative structures do not in and of themselves induce stable policy outcomes legislative policy mandates are changed and defined by the acts of the implementing agency in its role as a non voting decision making actor in the policy process endless cycling by the agency among possible implementation points is prevented by the agency s organizational goal of a stable environment i suggest then that legislative arrangements acting in conjunction with an agency executive s need to create a certain regular and predictable environment lead to the creation of an agency determined stability

a model of political competition in the underlying space of ideology this study makes use of the concept of ideology to answerimportant questions of political competition i develop amulticandidate model in which voters use ideology as asimplifying device that helps them to choose a candidate in anoisy environment three important results arise for thehomogeneous polity case first the candidate with moreresources is the one more likely to win the election second a merger between two parties might yield to a higher expectedplurality for the candidate of the newly formed party third political convulsion yields to a decrease in the expectedplurality for the incumbent candidate

the macroeconomics of modigliani miller abstract we examine the validity of a macroeconomic version of the modigliani miller theorem by this we mean that different capital structures can occur in equilibrium and that all of them are associated with the same allocation of commodities and the same welfare we develop a general equilibrium model with two production sectors risk averse households and financial intermediation by banks banks are funded by safe deposits and outside equity and monitor borrowers in lending two sets of equilibria emerge these sets differ with regard to the debt equity ratios of banks investment in risky technologies bank defaults and whether first best allocations are attained hence the macroeconomic version of the modigliani miller theorem fails to hold imposing minimum equity capital requirements however eliminates all inefficient equilibria and guarantees the validity of the macroeconomic version of the modigliani miller theorem

rules and games this paper reconsiders the relationship between the rules of a game and its outcomes we develop a notion of rule reform that leads to the selection of pareto improved equilibria points we then apply this notion to a series of naturally occurring fishing rules including examples from malaysia india brazil turkey and canada we show that reforming a game is conceptually akin to reforming an economy

will a radical transport pricing reform jeopardize the ambitious eu climate change objectives abstract this paper examines the effects of replacing current fuel taxes by a system of taxes that account better for all the different external costs of the different transport modes one of the important implications of this reform is that current fuel taxes are decreased to a level of 80 euro ton of co 2 but that the mileage related taxes on car and truck use increase using the tremove model for the transport sector of 31 european countries one finds that the volume of transport will decrease because current taxes on transport are too low compared to overall external costs overall co 2 emissions will decrease slightly using the markal times model for the belgian energy sector putting all sectors and technologies on equal footing shows that a fuel tax reform makes that it is not cost efficient to require large co 2 emission reductions in the transport sector and that traditional car technologies will continue to dominate the car market in 2020 2030

why democracies may actually be less reliable allies recent research builds on the observation that democracies have more durable alliances to argue that democracies make more reliable allies this need not be the case alliances serve as commitment devices adding ex ante credibility to states claims about ex post behavior variation in alliance durability must reflect differences in the desirability of formalizing alignments put simply democracies are most improved by formal commitments we offer two related explanations for why democracies might actually be less reliable alliance partners information costs for participating in policymaking and the advantages of organized interest groups combined with distributional incentives generated by the periodic turnover of governments may conspire to make informal commitments on the part of democracies problematic determining the net effect of democratic virtue and vice is best done empirically we test alliance reliability by focusing on intervention rather than on the duration or the number of commitments our results suggest that democracies make less reliable allies

political deadlocks and distributional information the value of the veil contractarian normative theory relies on the veil of ignorance construct to generate the political consensus required for its theories of justice by eliminating distributional information the veil is presumed to facilite consensus building by reducing conflict over the distributional effects of proposed constitutional rules or institutions this paper explores the extent to which excessive distributional information might also impede the ordinary day to day decision making of democratic institutions our analysis suggests that distributive information makes political deadlocks under majority rule more likely statistical evidence suggests that the efficacy of the u s congress has been reduced by the dramatic increase in distributional information made available to it over the past twenty five years

bureaucratic discretion or congressional control regulatory policymaking by the federal trade commission this paper extends stigler and peltzman s approach to regulation by incorporating a legislature the model yields comparative statics results and hence testable implications the paper then tests between two opposing approaches about regulatory agency behavior the first assumes agencies operate independently of the legislature and hence exercise discretion the second assumes that congress controls agency decisions the recent behavior of the federal trade commission provides the empirical setting substantial evidence is found for the specific predictions of the model including the hypothesis of systematic congressional influence over ftc decisions

political preferences for the pork barrel a generalization this paper provides a rational explanation for the observation of oversized coalitions often approaching unanimous size in the realm of distributive policies distributive policies are those which concentrate benefits in specific geographic areas states congressional districts while spreading costs through general taxation the explanation offered here that legislators may rationally prefer universalism to hard ball coalition politics generalizes earlier work of weingast and fiorina in particular it extends their results to pork barrel politics i e projects that are economically inefficient and demonstrates how packages of economically inefficient projects can nevertheless be politically popular the main theoretical feature that induces preferences for universalism is uncertainty over the composition of winning coalitions and consequently the desire for the political insurance that universalism provides

the cost of governing strategic behavior of the president and legislators in brazil s budgetary process several characteristics of a political system have been identified as increasing the cost of governing such as presidentialism federalism an open list with proportional representation a multiparty system and coalition governments although brazil suffers from all of these pathologies the authors argue that other characteristics of the brazilian system have the opposite effect and allow high levels of governability at low cost in particular the authors examine the role of legislators amendments to the budget which provide the executive a low cost means of obtaining support the authors provide evidence that the brazilian president routinely uses his or her powers to reward and punish legislators for supporting or opposing his or her interests in congress although legislators have a limited role in the budgetary process that role can have important electoral consequences for their political careers

does britain or the united states have the right gasoline tax this paper develops an analytical framework to assess the second best optimal level of gasoline taxation taking into account unpriced pollution congestion and accident externalities as well as interactions with the broader fiscal system we provide calculations of the optimal taxes for the us and the uk under a variety of parameter scenarios under our central parameter values the second best optimal gasoline tax is 1 01 gal for the us and 1 34 gal for the uk current tax rates are much lower than this in the us and higher in the uk the calculations are moderately sensitive to alternative parameter assumptions the congestion externality is the largest component in both nations revenue raising needs also play a significant role as do accident externalities and local air pollution potential welfare gains from reducing the current uk tax rate are estimated at nearly one fourth the production cost of all gasoline used in the uk even larger gains could be achieved by switching to a tax on vehicle miles with equal revenue yield for the us the welfare gains from optimizing the gasoline tax are smaller but those from switching to an optimal tax on vehicle miles are very large

regulation by prices quantities or both a review of instrument choice choosing appropriate policy instruments is an important part of successful regulation once objectives are agreed and suitable targets adopted policy makers can employ command and control regulation and or economic instruments and choose between fixing a price or a quantity this paper examines the relative advantages of price quantity and hybrid instruments according to their efficiency under uncertainty the trade off between credible commitment and flexibility implementation international considerations and political economy various illustrations of the theory are provided with two detailed applications to climate change and transport policy specifically congestion and safety pricing

proposal rights and political power in a canonical model of sequential collective bargaining over a divisible good we show that equilibrium expected payoffs are not restricted by players voting rights or their impatience for all monotonic voting rules and discount factors and for all divisions of the good among players there exists a stationary proposal making rule such that this division represents players expected payoffs in a stationary subgame perfect nash equilibrium in pure strategies the result highlights the significance of proposal rights in determining political power in collective deliberations t he purpose of this article is to further our understanding of political power in a committee environment we consider the problem of a group of two or more agents who must split a fixed divisible good agents cannot use physical force to divide this good our goal is to clarify the role and relative significance of other features of the political environment such as voting rights proposal rights agents patience etc in determining political power following shapley and shubik 1954 we gauge political power in terms of expected outcomes rather than a priori equate it with individual prerogatives 1 in that spirit political power is the share of the divisible good that agents can expect to obtain when their behavior conforms to an appropriately defined equilibrium notion 2 we model committee interaction using a canonical sequential bargaining game in each period a member of the committee is recognized with some probability that is fixed across periods and proposes a division of the good committee members then vote on the proposal if the proposal is approved in accordance with the underlying voting rule the proposed division is implemented and the

some evidence of congressional political markets in dod personnel allocations across states an empirical analysis of the distribution of department of defense dod personnel both military and civilian across states is developed with a commonly used public choice model of resource allocation in a legislative setting the model specification employs congressional seniority congressional committee representation presidential electoral votes and the per capita dollar value of prime defense contract awards to explain the variation of dod personnel across states over time the empirical analysis is performed over the last three decades and the results indicate that this particular public choice legislative model performs well in explaining the variation in dod personnel allocations across states the results also provide some limited evidence of a possible political market between the states for dod personnel allocations this analysis has implications for future testing of whether the base realignment and closure commission established in 1988 under president reagan and the defense base closure and realignment commission of 1990 under president bush were effective in significantly decreasing the legislative politics involved in the selection and approval process for base closure and realignment

electoral majorities political parties and collective representation in practice democracies privilege plurality parties theories of the democratic process challenge the democratic credentials of this practice abstract social choice theory wonders whether an elec

polarization politics and property rights links between inequality and growth most efforts to trace the effects of income inequality on growth have focused on redistribution however empirical investigation has not substantiated either the positive association of income inequality with redistribution or the negative association of redistribution with economic growth the authors analyze the effects of inequality in the broader context of social polarization they argue that social polarization whether rooted in income inequality or in ethnic tension makes large changes in current policies including those guaranteeing the security of contract and property rights more likely under a wide range of institutional arrangements the resulting uncertainties in the policy and contractual environment hinder growth they find strong empirical support for both parts of this argument the policy implications of their argument are quite distinct from those of arguments that inequality reduces growth by increasing pressures for redistribution if redistributive policies per se were to blame for the low growth resulting from inequality governments that seek to mitigate income inequality must inevitably confront a tradeoff between equity and growth if on the other hand the insecurity of property rights slows growth in unequal or otherwise polarized societies governments that commit over the long run to particular redistributive policies incur less risk of slowing economic growth fiscal redistribution that reduces inequality may actually increase growth by reducing the risks of political uncertainty

climate policies for road transport revisited ii closing the policy gap with cap and trade current policies in the road transport sector fail to deliver consistent and efficient incentives for greenhouse gas abatement see companion article by creutzig et al in press market based instruments such as cap and trade systems close this policy gap and complement traditional policies that are required where specific market failures arise even in presence of strong existing non market policies cap and trade delivers additional abatement and efficiency by incentivizing demand side abatement options this paper analyzes generic design options and economic impacts of including the european road transport sector into the eu ets suitable points of regulation are up and midstream in the fuel chain to ensure effectiveness cover all emissions and avoid double counting efficiency incentivize all abatement options and low transaction costs based on year 2020 marginal abatement cost curves from different models and current eu climate policy objectives we show that in contrast to conventional wisdom road transport inclusion would not change the eu ets allowance price hence industrial carbon leakage induced by adding road transport to the eu ets may be less important than previously estimated

pluralism and social choice pluralist political theory identifies certain patterns of political preferences as promoting the stability of democratic political systems and others as threatening to such stability social choice theory likewise identifies certain patterns of political preferences as leading to stability in social choice under majority rule and related collective decision rules and other patterns as leading to unstable social choice but the preference patterns identified by pluralist theory as promoting stability are essentially those identified by social choice theory as entailing instability thus the notions of stability and the implicit normative criteria associated with the two theories are very close to being logically incompatible this incompatibility suggests that the social choice ideal of collective rationality may not be one that we should endorse indeed the generic instability of the pluralist political process and its consequent collective irrationality may contribute to the stability of pluralist political systems

the median voter setters and non repeated construction bond issues the median voter model pervades the literature concerning the estimation of demands for collective expenditures but with some unanswered criticism the general issue addressed in this paper is whether observed collective expenditure levels and the characteristics of observed majorities are more adequately described by the median voter model or the romer and rosenthal setter model on a sample of non repeated hospital construction referenda bond issues the median voter model and the romer and rosenthal setter model are compared in both full information and uncertainty contexts little empirical support of the setter model is found indeed the evidence supports the absence of expenditure maximizing behavior the specific conclusions are 1 the standard median voter model explains quite well for this sample of non repeated bond issues 2 the explanatory power of the median voter model appears to vary across both voting arrangements and types of reversion threats 3 the explanation of hospital expenditures which have been judged too large may be due to how benefits and costs are distributed among voters and 4 the preponderance of large majorities for hospital construction in the face of evidence that such facilities typically become a burden on the general tax fund is consistent with setters offering the median ideal in the presence of a reversion below the ideal

capital requirements for securities firms regulatory authorities set capital requirements to cover the position risk of securities firms and to protect against losses arising from fluctuations in the value of their holdings the requirements may be set using the comprehensive approach required by the u s securities and exchange commission the building block approach required by the european community or the portfolio approach required by the united kingdom we compare these three alternatives using a large sample of u k equity trading books the portfolio approach systematically specifies larger requirements for riskier books and vice versa it is more efficient than the building block approach and far more efficient than the comprehensive approach

liquidity provision banking and the allocation of interest rate risk abstract the paper studies the efficient allocation of technology induced interest rate risk and the implications of such risk for efficient liquidity provision complete immunization against interest rate risk is shown to be undesirable as it precludes the exploitation of favourable reinvestment opportunities under the assumptions of diamond dybvig 1983 interest induced valuation risks of long term assets should be born by early withdrawers reinvestment opportunity risks of short term assets by late withdrawers efficient liquidity provision thus entails no shifting of interest rate risk in the absence of additional moral hazard second best allocations can be implemented through unregulated competition among banks

institutionalizing majority rule a social choice theory with policy implications recent results in the theory of pure majority rule demonstrate the genericity of majority rule cycles as established by richard mckelvey 1979 l cohen 1979 and n schofield 1978 majority rule nearly always breaks down and when it does the breakdown is complete the theorems given below may be summed up in the following three assertions 1 for any policy or alternative there exists a set of alternatives that command a majority of votes against it 2 this situation is not an abberation but rather is the general case and 3 it is almost always possible in multidimensional choice settings to find a sequence of votes that begins at any point and ends at any other point majority rule may wander anywhere yet when these theoretical assertions are applied to legislatures based upon majority rule they contain no obvious policy content or predictions the key insight which we elaborate in this paper is that majority rule is not self implementing there is no majority rule machine into which we feed preferences and out of which come outcomes rather there is a complex series of institutional arrangements underpinning the operation of majority rule legislatures arrangements from which theorists have mistakenly abstracted in fact majority rule theorists have not focused at all on institutional details instead they have restricted themselves to the majority rule dominance relation operating under the implicit assumption that what may be proved true about this relation is true of all legislative institutions based upon it in this paper we show that this assumption is misleading and that the the results based upon it must be reinterpreted in order to be useful for understanding real world committees and legislatures

a direct test of direct democracy new england town meetings representative democracies govern most locales in the us making it difficult to compare performance relative to direct democracy new england states however provide an opportunity to test both direct and representative democracy at the local level this article uses revealed preference axioms to compare spending patterns in new england towns and cities against median voter hypothesis benchmarks contrary to previous evidence we find no differences between direct and representative democracy the results suggest that horizontal competition arising from local fragmentation minimize differences between direct and representative local government providing support for wider applicability of median voter based empirical models of local government behaviour in the us

rational deterrence theory and evidence the causes and effects of the use of force raise crucial questions of substance and method issues are multiple and often are confused with each other thus while many case study findings contradict second wave deterrence theory they are consistent with some rational deterrence theories many findings however cannot be squared with the assumptions of rationality policies are suboptimal and behavior is often inconsistent furthermore the actor s values beliefs and calculations are exogenous to rational theories and can only be supplied by empirical analysis

marginal abatement costs of co2 emission reductions geographical flexibility and concrete ceilings an assessment using the poles model abstract the kyoto protocol envisage the setting up of flexibility mechanisms allowing annex b countries to fulfil their commitments to reducing greenhouse gases with respect for the principle of economic efficiency the current negotiations relate in particular to the possibility of setting up a system of tradable emissions permits for annex b countries and also of introducing ceilings to trade this paper analyses the stakes and economic potential of adopting this instrument both for those countries that made commitments in kyoto and for developing countries it is based on a formal approach that allows for a consistent framework of analysis the emission permit market is in fact simulated on the basis of a reference scenario and of marginal abatement cost curves and estimated by the poles model after analysing these marginal abatement cost curves and comparing them with those produced by other models we explore two different configurations for a competitive market a market limited to the annex b countries and a world market the results produced by the model show that widening the market to include developing countries is more effective than the annex b market solution it reduces the cost of implementing kyoto for oecd countries and at the same time allows the countries of the south to benefit from selling the permits this research also shows that introducing restrictions on exchanges for annex b countries could have a counter productive redistribution effect with the ethical argument that underlies that particular measure

recontracting trustworthiness and the stability of vote exchanges tullock 1981 has recently restated a discrepancy between theory and observation that exists in collective decisions and made a start toward explaining the discrepancy the discrepancy stated simply is this the theory of rational action in collective decisions implies that any outcome which requires vote exchanges to be achieved is unstable in that it can be overturned by a coalition all of whom find it their interest to do so yet a high degree of stability is observed in legislation despite the fact that much of this legislation required vote exchanges in order to be passed tullock accounts for this stability in part by pointing out that defections necessary to create the instability e g a defector induced to become an aristocrat in an inegalitarian coalition create an exposed position for the defector and the possible instability is likely to inhibit the defection in the first place tullock looks at two extreme forms that a winning coalition could take given a set of bills each of which has a special interest for one legislator a logrolling form which encompasses all of nearly all the legislature and a minimal winning coalition although the latter dominates the former in a game theoretic sense tullock argues that the latter will be unstable because of the power of enticement held by the excluded minority logrolling which includes nearly all the legislature is although formally dominated stable because of the absence of this potential enticement thus for tullock if i understand correctly his argument the potential instability of minimal winning coalitions leads any one of them to be succeeded not by another minimal winning coalition but by a non minimal winning coalition that it formally dominates shepsle and weingast in a subsequent paper argue that the institutional structure of actual legislatures restricts the richness of logrolling and coalition possibilities that under pure majority rule without such institutions could overturn a proto coalition or reverse an outcome shepsle and weingast 1981 511 thus they explain stability by stability inducing institutions

bureaucratic inefficiency failure to capture the efficiencies of outsourcing this paper analyzes the political economy ofoutsourcing by 16 federal bureaus during 1981 96 inan era of restricted budgets and budget balancing thepaper questions why federal bureaus did not exploitfully the efficiencies of outsourcing it proves thatfederal bureaus can achieve technical and costefficiency through outsourcing when contracts can benearly fully specified federal bureaus outsource byobtaining inputs to their production processes throughcontracts with competitive market producing units econometric results substantiate the hypothesis that institutions matter and reveal that bureausachieve varying levels of technical efficiency throughdifferent levels of outsourcing

the congressional bureaucratic system a principal agent perspective with applications to the sec this paper provides the theoretical perspective and empirical support for congressional dominance of agency decisions my thesis is twofold first because much of the previous evidence on this question is not evidence at all many scholars intuition and conclusions are based on a logically flawed foundation second i have provided here and in previous work a look at a variety of different agencies and in each case have shown how the events can plausibly be interpreted as involving congress agency problems within the congressional bureaucratic system are real and substantial just as they are within corporations however as in the latter institutional forms develop within the congressional system to partially if not wholly mitigate these problems the logical perspective together with the evidence provide a strong case against the agency dominance hypothesis as typified by the early sections of niskanen 1971 and wilson 1980

redistribution tax under non benevolent governments i analyze redistribution policies of majority governments in one kind of representative voting system i employ these assumptions members gain special benefits in the majority parties act strategically by using redistribution transfers the member s utility function is given in a quasi linear function the government s objective functions are the weighted summation of utilities and i classify governments according to the weight the four main results are a stable majority dose not support myopic government the stable redistribution policy of benevolent government is expressed by a scope of transfers the stable transfer of non benevolent governments depends on private utilities of the majority and opportunity costs of the minority and the altruistic government is not displayed by any other majority because it offers the total welfare of the majority to the minority as a subsidy

why so much stability an optimistic view of the possibility of rational legislative decisionmaking recent formal models of legislatures have proved that equilibrium outcomes are extremely unlikely without either 1 extreme restrictions upon preferences or 2 constraints upon the agenda the implication is that constant instability or dictatorial manipulation is the norm in politics

organizational politics and complexity coase vs arrow march and simon this article argues that the transaction cost approach to the problem of organizing economic activities is undermined by a neglect of the consequences of the complexity of the interconnections among such activities and in particular of the complexity generated by conflict and divergent interests of the agents involved with the increase of conflict organizational equilibria cease to exist thus hierarchy is in principle not necessarily an efficiency increasing remedy to the existence of transaction costs but can be explained also as a way to provide temporary equilibria in the everlasting organizational conflict

the median voter model in public choice theory the changing perception by public choice theorists about the relevance of the median voter model is a result of excessive extrapolation of the conclusions of theoretical models to the real world early in the 1970s the median voter model was often accepted as implying that the output produced in the public sector was what was most preferred by the median voter this claim is excessive because the median voter model is only a model of demand aggregation under majority rule and has little to say about the supply side of the public sector in the late 1970s many scholars identified several circumstances under which the model would not apply in theory but these critiques of the model were often viewed as reasons to abandon the median voter model altogether the model went from having excessive claims that made the model appear to be more powerful than it really is to excessive claims that made the model appear to be less powerful than it really is these latter claims were often in response to the earlier claims rather than to the model appropriately applied

gordon tullock s contributions to the theory of public choice i introduction gordon tullock came to economics and political science through a circuitous route he had almost no formal training in economics beyond a one quarter course that he took as a law student at the university of chicago from henry c simons he served in the foreign service for a number of years his first publications in economics date from the mid 1950s and were on monetary economics campbell and tullock 1954 1957 tullock 1956 tullock s formal entry into academia came in 1958 when he arrived at the thomas jefferson center for studies in political economy and social philosophy part of the department of economics at the university of virginia as a postdoctoral fellow tullock s biography from this point is fairly well known 1 tullock s contributions to economics and political science span almost forty years the following discussion is offered as a modest review of tullock s contributions the presentation is not meant to be detailed or copious but simply efficient in conveying what is important in tullock s work 2 ii methodology and style before turning to tullock s work a brief word is in order about his general approach to economic analysis and his writing style in fact tullock has shown far more interest in obtaining useful results than he has in how he happened to go about obtaining them in this way he has been a methodological anarchist operating under the general maxim that in science anything goes and results count his well known papers generally rely upon simple price theoretic or spatial constructs and perhaps a little algebra and game theory where he has found a need for more formidable tools he has generally acquired them through coauthors this anything goes approach does not seem to have hampered his work he has shown a talent for getting at the essence of problems and avoiding clutter in his work moreover he has shown almost no penchant for methodological exegesis in his work with the major exception of his general insistence that rational economic man models are the best description of behavior in almost any setting on this point he has been steadfast in fact buchanan 1987 uses tullock s emphasis on the homo economicus assumption to describe tullock as a natural economist i think this is an accurate interpretation of tullock we have all known people who are naturally good at things like playing short stop or the piano and in this sense it is analogous to say that tullock has a natural inclination toward economic reasoning and behavior tullock is not a great stylist his normal routine is to dictate the first draft of his papers and work through them from there this allows him to make his points but sometimes not very eloquently or clearly 3 the real question about scientific writing style is whether it matters or not there are protagonists on either side of this issue empirical research laband and taylor 1992 suggests that style has no marginal impact on citations this result can be interpreted in various ways but perhaps the most appropriate interpretation is that researchers have not yet found the margin on which writing style matters tullock of course could interpret this differently to say that style does not matter only results matter and this is what he has been about nonetheless mccloskey lists tullock along with several other modern economists as a good writer to wit when you read any of these in economics pay attention this is as good as it gets 1987 9 this either defends tullock s writing skills or calls into question the care with which mccloskey drew up his list of economists as writers iii the calculus the calculus of consent 1962 by james m buchanan and gordon tullock is a work of astounding creativity of all the classic works in the theory of public choice this book stands out for its range and depth of contribution it is moreover a readable book

the political economy of the fair labor standards act of 1938 this paper examines the congressional passage of the american minimum wage law the fair labor standards act of 1938 voting on the act is modeled as a function of the concentration of the constituencies for minimum wage legislation north south differentials and legislator ideology it is shown that the house radically altered the final content of the bill abandoning a proposed wages and hours board with discretionary powers to determine minimum wages in favor of a flat rate following the objections of several interest groups north south divisions over the bill had little influence over congressional voting and the influence of constituent groups increased relative to legislators ideology as the bill became an important election issue

a correction in elementary public choice geometry this paper corrects a long standing errorin elementary geometrical constructionsthat involve collective choices inmultidimensional settings the seeminglyinnocuous assumption of separability amongarguments in individual utility functionsdoes not imply symmetric indifferencecontours in shared goods space sharedgoods necessarily become gross substituteswhen resource or budgetary constraints areintroduced the corrected constructionsuggests that issue by issue voting is lessefficacious than is indicated in theconventional analysis

why so much stability one of duncan black s 1958 more important contributions was a classically simple proof that with complex issues and majority voting a stable outcome is unlikely this very simple proof that there would normally be no motion which can get a majority against all others and hence that any possible outcome is dominated by another has been elaborated and made more precise by later work without most improbable conditions endless cycling would be expected this is particularly true when logrolling is present as it normally is if we look at the real world however we observe not only is there no endless cycling but acts are passed with reasonable dispatch and then remain unchanged for very long periods of time thus theory and reality seem to be not only out of contact but actually in sharp conflict it is the purpose of this article to demonstrate that our existing theory when properly looked at does indeed imply a relatively stable outcome to voting in some cases however this stability will not be a true equilibrium because a random member of a large set will be chosen and then that random outcome will be left unchanged for long periods of time it does not dominate all other outcomes but is retained merely because of its particular history there are already several possible explanations for the observed stability in the literature we will take them up as they become relevant to the general line of reasoning i should however warn the reader that my own previous work including joint work with buchanan will play a major role here this may simply reflect egotism but i think that some of the early work which is now partially forgotten can provide solutions for more modern problems much recent public choice work has involved spatial models and these models frequently ignore logrolling the reason presumably is that it is very hard to put logrolling in a two dimensional diagram we shall begin considering such special models and assume that the issues are the sort that does not lead to logrolling and then turn to more complex logrolling problems with respect to the first situation in which logrolling does not occur there is already one possible explanation for the observed stability in the literature

marginal abatement cost curves for policy recommendation a method for energy system analysis abstract the transport sector is seen as one of the key factors for driving future energy consumption and greenhouse gas ghg emissions in order to rank possible measures marginal abatement cost curves have become a tool to graphically represent the relationship between abatement costs and emission reduction this paper demonstrates how to derive marginal abatement cost curves for well to wheel ghg emissions of the transport sector considering the full energy provision chain and the interlinkages and interdependencies within the energy system presented marginal abatement cost curves visualize substitution effects between measures for different marginal mitigation costs the analysis makes use of an application of the energy system model generator times for south africa times geeco for the example of gauteng province this study exemplary shows that the transport sector is not the first sector to address for cost efficient reduction of ghg emissions however the analysis also demonstrates that several options are available to mitigate transport related ghg emissions at comparable low marginal abatement costs this methodology can be transferred to other economic sectors as well as to other regions in the world to derive cost efficient ghg reduction strategies

executive veto legislative override and structure induced equilibrium in this study the structure induced equilibrium approach for modeling democratic institutions is extended to allow for the added structural features of executive veto and legislative override a multidimensional model is presented for a budgetary process involving three actors a legislature an appropriations committee and an executive in order to focus attention on the role of the veto and override possibilities simplifying assumptions are made with regard to other aspects of the agenda formation process in particular the committee has monopoly agenda power a closed amendment control rule is operative and perfect foresight expectations are held by the committee and the executive given these assumptions utility maximization by the several actors generates a budget outcome characterized as a structure induced equilibrium the general model is illustrated geometrically with a two dimensional example permitting budget outcomes to be analyzed for various combinations of veto rules and override provisions the analysis demonstrates that budget outcomes are sensitive to alternative specifications of veto rules and override provisions in the illustration executive veto power is shown to vary directly with both the permissiveness of the veto rule and the stringency of the override provision similar relationships however are not found to exist for total budget expenditures

power politics and the free trade bandwagon what explains the world s newfound enthusiasm for free trade are government leaders integrating their economies to achieve pareto improving gains or is it because a critical mass of pro free trade governments has acquired the capacity to go it alone leaving would be protectionists with a choice between a bad option opening their markets at very high political cost and an even worse alternative incurring the still higher political costs of exclusion this article suggests that in practice mutual gains seeking motivations are frequently dominated by defensive ones the north american free trade agreement is a case in point without in any way being bullied or coerced the mexican and canadian governments agreed to take part in a multilateral arrangement that the evidence suggests neither much liked although hard to reconcile with the political economy literature s positive sum model of international cooperation this finding is consistent with the broader power politics model introduced here

non optimal unanimous agreement in collective decision making unanimous agreement is accepted as a benchmark for economic efficiency because with everyone in agreement on an issue a pareto superior move will result from the issue s approval 1 this view of unanimous agreement is not completely accurate though because when unanimous agreement occurs under a less than unanimous decision rule a situation could arise in which individuals could agree with a majority in order to avoid being in the minority there is an important distinction to be made between a decision rule of unanimity and unanimous agreement under a less than unanimous decision rule under a unanimous decision making rule every voter has veto power and so can vote against an issue to keep it from being approved this means that under a unanimous decision rule nobody will approve an issue unless approval makes the individual better off that the status quo under a less inclusive rule like simple majority rule an issue can be approved without the vote of any particular voter as long as a majority of the voters approve typically the voter s single vote will not affect the outcome of a majority rule election thus the voter faces the more complex choice of being in the majority coalition or in the minority coalition sometimes a voter will be better off in the majority coalition than in the minority coalition even if changes proposed by the majority coalition make the voter worse off than the status quo therefore one would not be justified in concluding that because there is unanimous agreement on an issue everyone is made better off unanimous agreement under majority rule may result from all voters in a majority rule system being better off in the majority rather than the minority even if the change that is unanimously approved is not a pareto superior move 2 the general idea behind non optimal unanimous agreement is relatively straightforward under majority rule a majority has the power to exploit the minority 3 therefore under some situations everybody joins the majority on an issue even though some find themselves worse off when the

bureaucratic agenda control imposition or bargaining niskanen s economic model of bureaucratic behavior assumes that bureaucratic agenda control allows the bureau to impose upon a passive legislature its most preferred alternative from among the set of alternatives that dominate the status quo but does a monopoly on the agenda give bureaus this degree of influence over a voting body this article reports on experiments that demonstrate that a monopoly on the agenda puts the agenda monopolist in a position to bargain with a voting body without being able to impose his or her most preferred alternative on that body this evidence supports theories of bureaucratic legislative bargaining at the expense of theories of bureaucratic imposition

the eu 20 20 2020 targets an overview of the emf22 assessment three computable general equilibrium models are used to estimate the economic implications of a stylized version of eu climate policy if implemented at the lowest possible cost the 20 emissions reduction would lead to a welfare loss of 0 5 2 0 by 2020 second best policies increase costs a policy with two carbon prices one for the ets one for the non ets could increase costs by up to 50 a policy with 28 carbon prices one for the ets one each for each member state could increase costs by another 40 the renewables standard could raise the costs of emissions reduction by 90 overall the inefficiencies in policy lead to a cost that is 100 125 too high the models differ greatly in the detail of their results the ets non ets split may have a negligible impact on welfare while the renewables standard may even improve welfare the models agree however that the distortions introduced by total eu package imply a substantial welfare loss over and above the costs needed to meet the climate target the marginal total and excess costs reported here are notably higher than those in the impact assessment of the european commission

the fundamentals of the future international emissions trading system the study aims to analyze the sectoral marginal abatements cost curves for a number of eu countries as well as to examine the efficiency aspects and the economic impacts for the major sectors of the ets under different carbon market configurations in 2010 and 2020 to produce a consistent and realistic assessment we employ sources such as ghg national inventories naps and poles world energy model to constitute the sectoral base year and 2010 2020 emission levels in different countries and regions we then use the market analysis tool aspen which enables to derive supply and demand from sectoral maccs produced with the poles model and to evaluate the economic impacts on the carbon market participants the paper shows that in compliance with the kyoto targets the benefits of an enlarged carbon market are significant since more than 50 of the abatement in the short term have to be achieved in ets sectors which may indeed use cdm or ji credits a second major conclusion is that in 2020 the new flexibility margins provided by the adjustment of investments in new capacities compensate for the increase in pressure towards stronger emission reductions this reduces the relative importance of the enlarged carbon market

renewable energy sector in belarus a review abstract belarus by faces broad needs for energy security enhancement energy diversification and improvements in the state of the environment being the 13th largest importer of natural gas for energy by has very limited energy resources of its own maximum reduction of energy imports is among the strategic tasks of raising the efficiency of belarus economy the task fulfillment is possible through creation of a national infrastructure conductive to increasing the share of local and renewable sources of energy res in heat and power energy production by s geographic location has several advantages for extensive use of most of the renewable energy re and bioenergy sources however information on existing re sector for the second largest landlocked country in europe is still hardly awailable for a wider audience of researchers working in the field of economic environmental political planning and social aspects of energy supply in global proportions the review on the renewable energy sector in by so far has tried to give the background for res to describe their occurrence and conditions for using them leading up to a discussion of the role of renewable energy in current and future energy systems depending on a path of economic transition social values availability and economic rules used to judge the viability of competing solutions to ensure a simple comprehensible and transparent presentation of the different available options of using re for the provision of heat and power the individual chapters describing the various renewable energy potentials and contribution options have been similarly structured whenever possible and sensible

why so much stability another opinion in this paper i have suggested three important factors that render majority rule stable in real world settings small numbers of alternatives constraints on agenda setters and a meaningful weakening of the single peakedness condition these simple points along with shepsle s complementary notion of structure induced equilibria and an extension thereof incorporating strategic behavior krehbiel 1983 go a long way toward explaining the existence of stable outcomes in the real world

the applicability of marginal abatement cost approach a comprehensive review abstract the marginal abatement cost mac methodology is widely used in climate change policies policy makers rely on mac to assess feasible strategies and related costs to achieve emission reduction goals this paper introduces a variety of mac methodologies aiming at solving diverse problems which utilizes various calculable logic thus producing different results and implications this study applies a mind mapping method to capture differentiation of mac methods and systematically classify mac methodologies the applicability path analysis was proposed based on principles such as stakeholder type decision making objectives cost concept strategy mode and information scope our goal is to assess the applicability of different methodologies to reduce misuse by policy makers and to serve as a guide for subsequent research which might prompt and lead to the derivation of more consequential results in future studies the results of this study suggest that the complex method is not always better than the simplified method because policy makers are required to select the appropriate method according to the type of information needed it may even be suggested that mac could be reliable by ranking relative value of options compared with baseline rather than focusing on the absolute value of individual measures

transaction costs and coalition stability under majority rule 1 introduction under a majority voting rule representatives of specific political districts must bargain with representatives of other districts to build a coalition for enacting legislation that benefits their narrow constituencies but the theoretical public choice literature warns of potential for unstable majorities minimum winning coalitions divide program benefits just among their members creating incentives for those left out to entice defection by offering rewards to those who leave and form a different coalition as noted in mueller 1989 new coalitions emerge undermining the old ones leading to cyclical majorities short term programs and highly skewed distributions of program benefits 1 despite these dire predictions there is a general consensus in the literature such as tullock 1981 that programs are more stable and allocations more equal than the theory suggests 2 in an effort to explain the discrepancy between prediction and observation researchers have pointed to institutional rules and practices in congress for example as stated in shepsle and weingast 1981a and weingast and marshall 1988 the committee system provides a structure induced equilibrium that limits the possible range of vote trading and thereby helps maintain coalitions further shepsle and weingast 1981b miller and oppenheimer 1982 and collie 1988 argue that universalist sharing of program benefits enlarges the winning coalition and extends its political support 3 in this article we offer additional evidence of broad stable sharing in many programs enacted by congress by describing interstate distributions from the federal highway trusts fund htf the allocation formula for the htf was initiated in 1916 but despite wide divergence across the states in growth of various economic factors over the rest of the twentieth century such as vehicle registration and population that might have led to redirection of highway funds there were comparatively limited htf allocation adjustments analysis of state receipts from the htf relative to tax payments into the fund reveals that some states collect much more than they contribute whereas others pay in more than they receive even so interstate ratios of htf apportionments to payments have remained stable across the years varying less than changes in highway use measures would suggest going beyond this specific program we examine overall federal expenditure and tax shares among the states from 1975 to 1997 and show that there has been a similar continuity in the interstate distribution of federal funds and taxes 4 as with the highway program there is broad stable sharing of federal expenditures across the states with some receiving more than they contribute in taxes to the federal government to better understand this observed stability and use of relatively egalitarian sharing rules and to go beyond existing explanations we emphasize the desire of politicians to minimize the high transaction costs of negotiating and enforcing political coalitions politicians have incentive to prevent unraveling of political agreements to avoid the costs of searching for new coalition partners reaching agreement on the nature and distribution of program benefits and costs and verifying compliance these activities detract from a legislator s ability to address other voter concerns moreover legislators seek to protect constituent benefits accruing from long term programs that would be lost if coalitions unraveled 5 accordingly we argue that politicians assemble greater than minimum sized coalitions to build broad political support for their legislative programs offering benefits to a larger constituency in exchange for additional votes considerable negotiation over the distribution of program benefits a nd costs may be required so that once agreements are reached politicians will be loath to consider a major reallocation that could undermine the coalition

political solutions to market problems for some market failures serve as a rationale for public intervention however the fact that self interested market behavior does not always produce felicitous social consequences is not sufficient reason to draw this conclusion it is necessary to assess public performance under comparable conditions and hence to analyze self interested political behavior in the institutional structures of the public sector our approach emphasizes this institutional structure warts and all and thereby provides specific cautionary warnings about optimistic reliance on political institutions to improve upon market performance

automobile externalities and policies this paper discusses the nature and magnitude of externalities associated with automobile use including local and global pollution oil dependence traffic congestion and traffic accidents it then discusses current federal policies affecting these externalities including fuel taxes fuel economy and emissions standards and alternative fuel policies summarizing insofar as possible the welfare effects of those policies finally we discuss emerging pricing policies including congestion tolls and insurance reform and summarize the appropriate combination of policies to address automobile externalities

how to deal with the rebound effect a policy oriented approach policy makers and environmental agencies have echoed concerns brought forward by academics about the need to address the rebound effect for achieving absolute energy and environmental decoupling however such concerns have generally not been translated into tangible policy action the reasons behind this inaction are not fully understood and much remains unknown about the status of the rebound effect issue on the policy agenda and policy pathways available such knowledge gaps may hamper the development of effective policies to address this issue in this paper we examine the extent to and ways in which the rebound effect is considered in policy documents and analyse thirteen specific policy pathways for rebound mitigation the effectiveness of the pathways is scrutinised and conclusions are offered to mitigate rebound effects the main policy conclusions of the paper are that an appropriate policy design and policy mix are key to avoiding undesired outcomes such as the creation of additional rebound effects and environmental trade offs from the discussion economy wide cap and trade systems as well as energy and carbon taxes when designed appropriately emerge as the most effective policies in setting a ceiling for emissions and addressing energy use across the economy

a tale of two market failures technology and environmental policy abstract market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies these combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the development and adoption of environmentally beneficial technology both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the rate and direction of technological advance is influenced by market and regulatory incentives and can be cost effectively harnessed through the use of economic incentive based policy in the presence of weak or nonexistent environmental policies investments in the development and diffusion of new environmentally beneficial technologies are very likely to be less than would be socially desirable positive knowledge and adoption spillovers and information problems can further weaken innovation incentives while environmental technology policy is fraught with difficulties a long term view suggests a strategy of experimenting with policy approaches and systematically evaluating their success

executive veto power and credit claiming the line item veto has often be heralded as an effective tool in reducing pork barrel spending a model of veto bargaining over public goods and pork barrel spending in the presence of credit claiming incentives demonstrates that the item veto does not necessarily reduce pork barrel spending and reduces the executive s ability to attain his preferred level of spending on public goods the item veto also has an ambiguous effect on the balance of power between the executive and the legislature while strengthening the position of the legislative agenda setter within the legislature

the allocation of death in the vietnam war a public choice perspective in this paper we explore a political aspect of military choices in time of war we do not question the political origin of a military draft we assume a draft exists our interest centers on the following issue what is the probability that an individual will become a casualty in the war we model this problem as being influenced by politics in the sense that assignment to combat or non combat positions can be influenced by political considerations simply put casualties across u s states will be a function of the political influence especially in military affairs of a state s house and senate delegations ceteris paribus to test this hypothesis we develop an empirical model of casualties by state over the zenith of the vietnam war period 1965 1971 the model includes both political influence and relevant demographic variables

on the political economy of state highway expenditures some evidence of the relative performance of alternative public choice models this paper explores the extent to which the public demand for roads and or power of special interest groups determines road expenditures at the state level using an extension of the methodology developed in congleton and shughart 1990 reduced form models of median voter demand special interest group equilibria and a combined model are estimated using cross sectional state data from the united states we generally find support for the hypothesis that voting matters the pure median voter models have a better fit than the pure special interest group models moreover in our combined model we find that variables from the median voter model can not be dropped without significantly reducing the combined model s fit