With twelve new members the decision making in the European Union via intergovernmental cooperation will become ineffective. In order to avoid a Stagno-Europe the EU has a choice: Either it looks for the very essentials in the common institutional frame or the member states agree in ceding...

Four types of economics" relevant for institutional analysis are distinguished: Standard Neoclassical Economics; Socio-Economics or Social Economics; New Institutional Economics; and Psychological Economics (often misleadingly called Behavioural Economics). The paper argues that an extension of...

It has been argued in the literature that, interjurisdictional competition forces the public sector to increase its efficiency and thus helps to tame Leviathan governments. The paper addresses this hypothesis by means of a simple taxcompetition model with a Leviathan state. It is seen that the...

Economic growth and poverty reduction require for a country to establish efficient rules for economic and political transactions. Poor countries suffer from inadequate, inefficient transaction rules. Formal rules (e.g., laws, policies) must be nested in hospitable behavioural norms and values....

Political Economy and Public Choice have studied the interactions between the economy and the polity for over 60 years now. The present paper endeavours to provide a critical discussion of this literature and its achievements. In particular, it starts with the different approaches based on...

Consider an economy populated by males and females, both rich and poor. The society has to choose one of the following marriage institutions: polygyny, strict monogamy, and serial monogamy (divorce and remarriage). After having identified the conditions under which each of these equilibria...

This paper analyzes the relationship between the size of an economic union and the degree of policy centralization. We consider a political economy setting in which elected representatives bargain about the degree of centralization within the union. In our model strategic delegation affects the...

This paper analyzes the a priori influence of the European Parliament (EP) and the Council of Ministers (CM) on legislation of the European Union adopted under its codecision procedure. In contrast to studies which use conventional power indices, both institutions are assumed to act...

Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, in wie weit polit-ökonomische Ansätze den Prozess der Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union erklären können. Eine grundlegende These der Arbeit lautet wie folgt: Kritiker der Theorien rationaler Entscheidungen beziehen sich häufig auf eine sehr...

Exchange-rate policies of Central Eastern European Countries (CEEC) have often been a subject matter. Yet, some new insights in terms of political economy considerations upon exchange-rate policy are provided. It is pointed out that it is more appropriate to analyse exchange-rate policy in...