This paper proposes a methodology to combine different dimensions of economic governance into a combined index. The quality of economic governance index (QEGI) is estimated as the weighted average of principal components of the standardised economic governance indicators, where weights are...

Brennan and Hamlin (2002) note that expressive voting still holds at the constitutional phase. The argument, when taken to its necessary conclusion, proves quite problematic for Constitutional Political Economy. Veil mechanisms following Buchanan induce expressive voting at the constitutional...

In order to analyze conflict and cooperation between a State and a non ruling group in a general equilibrium, I unite pure rent-seeking models and economic models of conflict under an assumption of incomplete property rights. I show that a unique and globally stable Nash equilibrium exists in...

This work is a contribution to the Second Generation Theory (SGT) of fiscal federalism that studies fiscal federalism through contemporary economic and industrial organization theory. First, it establishes context by introducing the two classic motivations in support of federalism, namely,...

We study the value of commitment in contests and tournaments when there are costs for the follower to observe the leader's behavior. In a contest, the follower can pay to observe the leader's effort but cannot observe the effectiveness of that effort. In a tournament, the follower can pay to...

This paper analyzes a simple model that captures the relationship between institutional quality, the shadow economy and corruption. It shows that an improvement in institutional quality reduces the shadow economy and affects the corruption market. The exact relationship between corruption and...

The causes and consequences of corruption have attracted much attention in recent years by both academics and policy makers. Central in the discussion on the impact of corruption are perception-based indices. While informative, these indices are ordinal in nature and hence provide no indication...

This paper generalizes previous existence results on unidimensional electoral competition, by extending the traditional two-party electoral game to the case where parties have mixed motivations, in the sense that they are interested in winning the election, but also in the policy implemented...

Variations of bilateral aid flows are difficult to explain on the basis of official development objectives or recipient need. At the example of US aid to Pakistan, this paper suggests alternative political economic explanations, notably the relevance of ethnic lobbying and the relevance of US...

We characterize a rule in cost spanning tree problems using an additivity property and some basic properties. If the set of possible agents has at least three agents, these basic properties are symmetry and separability. If the set of possible agents has two agents, we must add positivity. In...