Are migrants self-selected and sorted according to their views about what constitutes a fair level of redistribution? A major challenge in answering this question is that fairness concerns and self-interest are intertwined. We present a theoretical framework that allows us to test whether...

In the context of current economic and financial crisis a comparative analysis of the main indices of economic and social performance of the EU member states is necessary. In such line of argument, the authors propose, as novelty, an economic power-economic performance matrix as a methodological...

This paper proposes a general statistical framework for systemic financial stress indexes. Several existing index designs can be represented as special cases. We introduce a daily variant of the ECB's CISS for the euro area and the US. The CISS aggregates a representative set of stress...

The paper investigates the effect of local electoral rules on the political participation of the residents, as reflected in voter turnout. It focuses on Italy, where municipal voting schemes are differentiated by the size of the city: a single ballot system applies to municipalities with less...

The paper analyzes local political cycle in Czech municipalities over the period between 1997 and 2013. We apply the system and the difference GMM estimators to detect electoral manipulation in current and capital expenditures in electoral and pre-electoral years. Primarily, we estimate the...

Recently, the channels of citizen participation in Germany with regard to governmental processes are subject to change. Classical interaction between politicians and citizens still takes place. However, there are new tools for participation at hand as well. One interesting channel that attracted...

Rent-seeking is defined as exercising privileges or expending resources in order to obtain uncompensated gain by redistributing the wealth of others without reciprocating any benefits back to society through wealth creation. This paper pioneers in analyzing the agglomeration of rent-seeking...