We introduce political economics into the soft budget constraint problem by asking if the timing of elections has the potential to harden budget constraints. Specifically, we ask under which circumstances the soft budget constraint problem is worse - with synchronized elections, i.e....

In this methodological paper, we prove that the key tax competition game introduced by Zodrow and Mieszkowski (1986) and Wildasin (1988), extended to asymmetric regions, possesses a Nash equilibrium under several assumptions commonly adopted in the literature : goods are supposed to be normal ;...

We introduce a new way to model the Bismarckian social insuance system, stressing its corporatist dimension. Comparing the Beveridgean, Bismarckian and Liberal systems according to the majority voting rule, we show that for a given distribution of risks inside society, the Liberal system wins if...

This paper examines a situation where a decision-maker determines the appropriate compensation that should be implemented for a given ecological damage. The compensation can be either or both in monetary and environmental units to meet three goals : i) no aggregate welfare loss, ii) minimization...