The main objective of the paper is to use the following terms of Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson - Despotic, Real, Paper, Shackled Leviathans - to check and evaluate the state of democracy, governance and social power in Central and Eastern European Countries (CECCs). Six states were included...

This paper offers a framework for understanding the origin of market-preserving government. The paper shows that when parties in a Hobbesian society end in an arms race rather than war, they can create a market-preserving government to maintain the no-war equilibrium at lower cost. The...

Pork-barrel spending is the use of federal money for localized projects that yield only a narrow geographic benefit. It is a commonly held belief that politicians use this spending to improve their chances of re-election. One way that an incumbent can increase their chances of re-election is...

A Hobbesian society is modeled to study how the market emerges from violence. From a Cournot military contest for wealth, primitive markets emerge when Rousseau's Garden of Eden or an arms race is the equilibrium rather than war. Politically-dominated (e.g., socialist) or Smithian markets with a...

Die erneute Klage gegen den bundesstaatlichen Finanzausgleich seitens der bayerischen Staatsregierung zeigt die bayerische Entschlossenheit, das bisherige System zu verändern. Dabei wird unter anderem auf die Normierung der Grunderwerbsteuer und die Einwohnerveredelung, die im Rahmen des...

Nach langwierigen Verhandlungen haben sich CDU/CSU und SPD auf einen Koalitionsvertrag geeinigt und eine gemeinsame Regierung gebildet. In diesem Beitrag wird analysiert, wie verschiedene Koalitionsaussagen der Parteien im Vorfeld der Bundestagswahl 2013 die Verteilung der Macht in der...