Eine neue Studie zeigt den Einfluss von Parteiideologie auf Wirtschaftspolitik in den US-Bundesstaaten auf. Demokraten haben die Staatstätigkeit ausgeweitet; Republikaner haben sie zurückgefahren. Insbesondere haben Republikaner die Arbeitsmärkte dereguliert. Problemlos implementiert werden...

This study was prepared by Nina Czernich while she was working with the Ifo Institute for Economic Research.It was completed in December 2010 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. The study addresses the question whether the emergence of...

Is it a matter of pure altruism or shortsightedness when a dictator spends an increasing amount of his revenues for the population, while cutting on own consumption? In order to be able to consume, the dictator first has to stay in power. We present a formal model of a power maximizing dictator....

This paper analyzes the traditional unidimensional, two-party electoral competition game when parties have mixed motivations, in the sense that they are interested in winning the election, but also in the policy implemented after the contest. In spite of having discontinuous payoffs, this game,...

We analyze a stochastic bargaining game in which a new dollar is divided among committee members in each of an infinity of periods. In each period, a committee member is recognized and offers a proposal for the division of the dollar. The proposal is implemented if it is approved by a majority....

We establish that, except for a finite set of common costs of participation, all equilibria of a class of complete information voting games (as in Palfrey and Rosenthal (1983)) are regular. Thus, all the equilibria of these games (including those exhibiting high turnout rates) are robust to...

How does implementing harsh economic reforms influence voting behaviour? And how do the patterns of political support change over the course of transition? We analyse these issues using data from a sequence of 11 opinion surveys conducted in the Czech Republic between 1990-98. We find that -...

We introduce tax contracts and examine how they affect government formation and welfare of voters in a democracy with proportional elections. A tax contract specifies a range of tax rates a party is committed to if in government. We develop a new model of party competition in which parties...