When the members of a voting body exhibit single peaked preferences, majority winners exist. Moreover, the median(s) of the preferred alternatives of voters is (are) indeed the majority (Condorcet) winner(s). This important result of Duncan Black has been crucial in the development of public...

This short paper analyses the tension between "widening" and "deepening" of organizations such as the European Union. Members have the same consumption benefit of reform but weak and strong members differ in their cost of exerting reform efforts. As decisions are taken by unanimity, the reform...

The decision-making rules of the European Union (EU) are defined in an incomplete contract signed by 15 national governments. The design of the contract defines the set of policy issues where it applies – in decision-making rules i.e. the majority rules and the division of powers among the...

A committee makes a decision on a project on behalf of "the public." Members of the committee agree on the a priori value of the project, and hold additional private information about its consequences. They are experts who care about the value of the project and about being considered well...

We study, in a model with unemployment, how labour market status affects the preferences for public spending, whether in the form of a public good or subsidies. We then derive the implications for the dynamics of government expenditures, under the hypothesis of majority voting.

So far industry-specific standardization has found little interest in research, even though the developed standards have remarkable impact on the respective industries. Broad literature about standard setting in various fields is available, but as Lerner and Tirole (2006) remark, research that...

Economic policymaking in modern democracies generates a great deal of special-interest politics. In policy areas such as finance, trade policy, and regulation, policy decision create benefits for well-defined groups with the cost borne by society at large. Given the difficulties with the...

This paper compares the political support for a targeted and a universalistic welfare policy in a model in which incomes are stochastic (so that welfare policies have an insurance benefit) and unequal ex ante (so that welfare policies have a redistributive effect). With self-interested voting,...

Mondialisation, globalisation, internationalisation autant de concepts qui ont leur signification propre, même si la frontière de démarcation est souvent floue. Le propos ne sera pas d'en faire l'exégèse ni d'en préciser le contenu mais de considérer, au départ, le phénomène...