I consider an extension of the Borda count to the case when individuals can have weak preferences, and I show that it satisfies several normatively appealing axioms. The first axiom is an extension to the case of weak preferences of the Modified Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives axiom...

In this paper I discuss how Law and Economics can benefit from incorporating some insights from Public Choice into their analyses. Within this argument, I examine the evolution of experimental methods by looking at laboratory, field, and natural experiments; and conducting a very simple...

The paper investigates determinants of investments in state capacity and institutional change in contemporary Ukraine. After formulating a simple sequential two-stage model of investments in state capacity, the paper estimates autoregressive distributed lag and vector autoregressive models to...

In this work we simulate the effects of tax autonomy of the Austrian states on the levels of public employment in each state. We show that depending on the strength of the public sector lobby, tax autonomy would require reduction of employment in the public sector between 25% and 35% of the...

We apply the difference-in-discontinuities design to disentangle the fiscal effects of the governance system conditional on electoral systems. We take advantage of a natural experiment, which involves two institutional reforms at the local level in Poland. The first reform introduced two...

Recent studies suggest a considerable amount of horizontal strategic interaction amongst governments exists. The empirical approach in these studies typically relies on estimating reaction functions in a uni-dimensional policy framework, where a nonzero slope estimate suggests strategic...

In a society composed of a ruler and its citizens: what are the determinants of the political equilibrium between these two? This paper approaches this problem as a game played between a ruler who has to decide the distribution of the aggregate income and a group of agents/citizens who have the...