摘要 :
This paper analyzes and compares the explanatory powers of the two main theories describing the processes that lead left-wing governments to spend more than right-wing ones: (1) a demand-driven process whereby voters demand more e...
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This paper analyzes and compares the explanatory powers of the two main theories describing the processes that lead left-wing governments to spend more than right-wing ones: (1) a demand-driven process whereby voters demand more expenditures and thus vote for the left; (2) a supply-driven process whereby governments in office follow their preferences/ideologies at the cost of deviating from constituents' demands (party preference hypothesis). We provide a model that identifies the predictions associated with those hypotheses and show that they generate a problem of observational equivalence in empirical analysis. We solve the problem by applying two identification strategies, Regression Discontinuity Design and Propensity Score Matching. Using data from the French local public sector, our estimates provide mixed evidence of supply-side effects. Left-wing governments facing socioeconomic situations analogous to right-wing ones seem not to spend more on social services, but they do appear to spend more on other types of expenditure programs.
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This article proposes a game-theoretic setting to explain the fragmentation of majority and opposition coalitions in governments. The model is two-stage: (1) the leaders of each coalition control the size of the parties in their g...
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This article proposes a game-theoretic setting to explain the fragmentation of majority and opposition coalitions in governments. The model is two-stage: (1) the leaders of each coalition control the size of the parties in their group so as to maximize the political power of their coalition, and (2) the political party leaders in each coalition decide their degree of participation in their coalition's collective action. The main conclusion is that the concentration in the two opposing coalitions will be related when the competition between them is fierce. This is shown to hold for the Left-wing and Right-wing coalitions in French local governments, revealing competition in fragmentation in these coalitions.
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Several countries have voted reforms in order to reduce the number of national representatives and many others have debated about that possibility. There is, however, no commonly accepted rule for assessing the optimal number of s...
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Several countries have voted reforms in order to reduce the number of national representatives and many others have debated about that possibility. There is, however, no commonly accepted rule for assessing the optimal number of seats in parliament. This article offers a review of the state-of-the-art, presenting the main contributions in political economy and related fields about the question of legislature sizes, their determinants and their impact. Based on a cross-sectional comparison of 139 countries, the review is accompanied with a set of figures and tables that illustrates a set of stylized facts.
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We use a ten-round online mind game to determine whether the effect of honesty nudges depends on timing and content. Reminding individuals about the right thing to do in-creases honesty. Including information that it is possible t...
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We use a ten-round online mind game to determine whether the effect of honesty nudges depends on timing and content. Reminding individuals about the right thing to do in-creases honesty. Including information that it is possible to assess an individual's dishon-esty strengthens the effect of the intervention. Both types of intervention are similarly ef-fective when they take place before an individual has made any decision or after individu-als have played five rounds of the mind game. Nudging an individual after they have made five decisions allows us to add personalized information based on the individual's previ-ous response; however, this does not increase honesty. Examining the reaction to nudges based on previous behavior shows that (presumably) honest and dishonest individuals re -spond by reducing overreporting. The effect of the different nudge content is driven by those previously dishonest.(c) 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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Performance incentives have become increasingly important in academia. Evidence suggest that they increase not only researchers' effort but also their cheating. We develop a principal-agent framework in which a research institutio...
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Performance incentives have become increasingly important in academia. Evidence suggest that they increase not only researchers' effort but also their cheating. We develop a principal-agent framework in which a research institution (principal) aims to reward scientific productivity considering the social benefit of research and the remuneration costs. Researchers (agents) take into account what others are doing. As a consequence, the introduction of performance incentives not only leads to fraudulent behavior in the short run, but may also deteriorate the scientific norm in the long run. In the face of these dynamics, the principal pursues two goals: to increase productivity (effort incentive policy) and to deal with fraud (anti-fraud policy). Several factors determine the optimal mix of policies: economic factors (researchers' cost of providing high or low effort, the societal value of scientific knowledge and the societal costs of scientific misbehavior) and psychological factors (the evolution of norms over time). An important insight of our theory is that when research institutions seek to encourage the production of high quality research, they should also raise the salary for normal research to avoid misconduct.
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