One cannot doubt the ubiquitous lack of hope and confidence in the so-called democratic institutions by the large majority of people. The fundamental reason thereof is the blatant contradiction between the principle of democracy, promoting the rule of law and thereby the welfare of people, and...

We examine the formation of multilateral, hub-and-spoke and bilateral international R&D strategic alliances (overlapping climate clubs) to reduce CO2 emissions. R&D provision in clubs produces two types of positive externalities: a global public good (i.e., reduction of CO2 emissions) and...

This article comments on the role of empirical subjective well-being research in public policy within a constitutional, procedural perspective of government and state. It rejects the idea that, based on the promises of the measurement, we should adopt a new policy perspective that is oriented...

Whether there are gender di erences in lying has been largely debated in the past decade. Previous studies found mixed results. To shed light on this topic, here I report a meta-analysis of 8,728 distinct observations, collected in 65 Sender-Receiver game treatments, by 14 research groups....

This article discusses the 'associational democratic' model of relationship between state and civil society organizations, which recommends devolution of as many regulatory functions as possible to local groups and associations with detailed knowledge of problems and possible solutions,...

The present paper is part of unpublished book divided into three interrelated manuscripts that analyze the collapse of the Sudan. The theory introduced here is that the regime was built on kleptocratic framework. That enhanced a rapid transformation of the values' system of the country and...

This paper revisits the debates about the meaning of economic efficiency, and the moral dilemmas associated with using Kaldor-Hicks efficiency or Pareto efficiency for policy analysis. I lay out the best case for efficiency as meta-value, and highlight that it still does not allow us to evade...

The international conference “Social Solidarity Economy and the Commons - Contributions to the Deepening of Democracy” was held on November 6th-8th 2019 at the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) in Lisbon (Portugal). Its aim was to promote dialogue and exchanges of knowledge and...

This paper examines the mechanisms by which a World Champion is chosen in the For-mula One Championship. Furthermore it is analysed whether there is a best method to do this. For this purpose we will discuss the methods used by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) since the...

A group of agents wants to reform the status quo if and only if this is Pareto improving. Agents have private information and may have common or private objectives, which creates a tension between information aggregation and minority protection. We analyze a simple voting system - majority rule...