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Fiscal Federalism and Legislative Malapportionment: Causal Evidence from Independent but Related Natural Experiments
Galiani, Sebastian; Torre, Iván; Torrens, Gustavo - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014
We exploit three natural experiments in Argentina in order to study the role of legislative malapportionment on the biased federal tax sharing scheme prevalent in the country. We do not find support to attribute it to legislative malapportionment during periods when democratic governments were...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010969273
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Conflict, Evolution, Hegemony, and the Power of the State
Levine, David; Modica, Salvatore - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2013
In a model of evolution driven by conflict between societies more powerful states have an advantage. When the influence of outsiders is small we show that this results in a tendency to hegemony. In a simple example in which institutions differ in their "exclusiveness" we find that these...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010950707
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Third-Party Opportunism and the Nature of Public Contracts
spiller, pablo t.; Moszoro, Marian W. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012
The lack of flexibility in public procurement design and implementation reflects public agents' political risk adaptation to limit hazards from opportunistic third parties - political opponents, competitors, interest groups - while externalizing the associated adaptation costs to the public at...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010950960
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Elections and the Quality of Public Officials: Evidence from U.S. State Courts
Snyder, James M. Snyder, Jr.; Lim, Claire S.H. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012
We investigate the influence of electoral rules and voter information in elections on voting outcomes and the quality of public officials, using new data on state court judge elections in 39 states in the U.S. from 1990 to 2010. We find, first, that voting is very partisan in partisan judicial...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010951100
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Autocracy, Democracy and Trade Policy
Galiani, Sebastian; Torrens, Gustavo - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2013
This paper develops a politico-economic model for use in studying the role of intra-elite conflict in the simultaneous determination of a country's political regime, trade policy and income-tax-based redistribution scheme. Three socioeconomic groups are involved: two elite groups and workers,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010951164
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Private Returns to Public Office
Fisman, Raymond; Schulz, Florian; Vig, Vikrant - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012
, we rule out a range of alternative explanations for differential earnings of politicians and a relevant control group …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011271399
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Do Leaders Affect Government Spending Priorities?
Drazen, Allan; Brender, Adi - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2009
Since a key function of competitive elections is to allow voters to express their policy preferences, one might take it for granted that when leadership changes, policy change follows. Using a dataset we created on the composition of central government expenditures in a panel of 71 democracies...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005085211
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Signalling, Incumbency Advantage, and Optimal Reelection Thresholds
Caselli, Francesco; Morelli, Massimo; Cunningham, Thomas E. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012
Much literature on political behavior treats politicians as motivated by reelection, choosing actions to signal their …. Second, voters can exploit the signalling behavior of politicians by precommitting to a higher threshold for signals received …. Raising the threshold discourages signalling effort by low quality politicians but encourages effort by high quality …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009652779
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The Control of Politicians in Normal Times and Times of Crisis: Wealth Accumulation by U.S. Congressmen, 1850-1880
Snyder, James M. Snyder, Jr.; Querubin, Pablo - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2011
We employ a regression discontinuity design based on close elections to estimate the rents from a seat in the U.S. congress between 1850-1880. Using census data, we compare wealth accumulation among those who won or lost their first race by a small margin. We find evidence of significant returns...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009372447
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The Dynamics of Firm Lobbying
Kerr, William R.; Lincoln, William F.; Mishra, Prachi - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2011
We study the determinants of the dynamics of firm lobbying behavior using a panel data set covering 1998-2006. Our data exhibit three striking facts: (i) few firms lobby, (ii) lobbying status is strongly associated with firm size, and (iii) lobbying status is highly persistent over time....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009359896