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Government intervention often gives rise to contests and the government can influence their outcome by choosing their type. We consider a contest with two interest groups: one that is governed by a central planner and one that is not. Rent dissipation is compared under two well-known contest...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013061935
We study the interaction between competitive markets that produce large but unequally distributed welfare gains and elections through which the poor majority can redistribute income away from the rich minority. In our simple laboratory democracy, subjects first earn their income by trading in a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013134222
of the lobbying investment depends on whether or not the candidates are willing to respond and able to collude on low …-tax policies that do not harm their relative chances in the elections. In the experiment, we find that lobbying is never successful …% of societies with finitely-repeated encounters. However, lobbying investments are not always profitable, and profit …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013132418
The form of contests for a single fixed prize can be determined by a designer who maximizes the contestants' efforts. This paper establishes that, under common knowledge of the two asymmetric contestants' prize valuations, a fair Tullock-type endogenously determined lottery is always superior to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013096475
Many economic and political decisions are the outcome of strategic contests for a given prize. The nature of such contests can be determined by a designer who is driven by political considerations with a specific political culture. The main objective of this study is to analyze the effect of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013138667
Using a unique dataset of German members of parliament with information on total earnings including outside income, this paper analyzes the politicians' wage gap (PWG). After controlling for observable characteristics as well as accounting for selection into politics, we find a positive PWG...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013129100
In this paper we investigate the effect of family connections to politicians on individuals' labor market outcomes. We combine data for Italy over almost three decades from longitudinal social security records on a random sample of around 1 million private sector employees with the universe of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012995594
This paper deals with the impact of electoral competition on politicians' outside earnings. In our framework, politicians face a tradeoff between allocating their time to political effort or to an alternative use generating outside earnings. The main hypothesis is that the amount of time spent...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012768170
We argue that anti-corruption laws may provide an efficiency rationale for why political parties should meddle in the distribution of political nominations and government contracts. Anti-corruption laws forbid trade in spoils that politicians distribute. However, citizens may pay for gaining...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012783283
This paper presents a model in which promotion of employees within the internal firm hierarchy is determined by the individuals' allocation of time between promotion/rent-seeking and productive activity. We consider the effect of an increase in the employer's knowledge (information) regarding...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013096774