A key issue in the design of a legal system is the choice of the mechanism aggregating preferences over the level of deterrence. While under Case law appellate judges’ biases offset one another at the cost of volatility of precedents, under Statute law the Legislator chooses certain rules that...

Current methods of disseminating scholarly information focus on the use of journals who retain exclusive rights in the material they publish. Using a simple model we explore the reasons for the development of the traditional journal model, why it is no longer efficient and how it could be...

Interconnections can be an effective way to increase competition in wholesale electricity markets in particular for smaller markets with few actors. This paper quantitatively examines the potentials for interconnections in the Irish Single Electricity Market (SEM). We use a time-varying Kalman...

The first aim of this paper is to revisit the puzzle of cooperation in large-scale societies.It proposes a game theoretic model showing how endogenous emotion-based punishment can sustain ull cooperation when interactions are not repeated, provided that players' endogenous trust is high enough....

Historical evidence has taught us that it is often the poorest and most deprived people in unequal societies who are recruited to fight in civil wars. The present contribution constructs a theoretical model of the choice between appropriation and production, where conflict is represented as...

How important are national macroeconomic indicators for people’s satisfaction with democracy? This paper empirically explores the link from macroeconomic variables to support for established democratic systems. We combine country-level data on growth, inflation, and unemployment from the OECD...

This paper develops a model of the relationship between the age of a dictator and economic growth. In the model a dictator must spread the resources of the economy over his reign but faces mortality and political risk. The model shows that if the time horizon of the dictator decreases, either...

Rational choice models predict that political competition and political participation have opposite effects on the size of government. We investigate these theories using data from a panel of 18 Latin American countries during the 20th century. Our research builds evidence for the prediction...

We study the consequences of the extension of the voting franchise for the size of (central) government and for the tax structure in 10 Western European countries, 1860-1938. We show, .rstly, that the gradual relaxation of income and wealth restrictions on the right to vote contributed to growth...

This article examines what may be taken into account, when designing a mechanism of international public finance to support south-north cooperation on domestic climate policies in developing countries. We draw lessons from existing mechanisms of conditional transfers. Experience with...