Regulation is a way of intervention of the public sector, which uses its legitimate and coercive power to establish restrictions to agent’s activities who participate in the market and guarantee the efficient allocation of goods and services and social welfare. In Colombia, as an interesting...

It is commonly observed that international trade negotiations repeatedly fail to achieve outcomes that would appear to satisfy the criteria of efficiency and mutual advantage. It can be argued that this is due principally to the influence of interest groups. This paper develops an analytical...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a system for regularly offered government-sponsored technology prizes. Such prizes would preserve the incentive to invent without the barriers to entry that come with the patent system. This is of particular interest to entrepreneurs as they lack...

This paper introduces the idea of “robust political economy.” In the context of political economic systems, “robustness” refers to a political economic arrangement's ability to produce social welfare-enhancing outcomes in the face of deviations from ideal assumptions about individuals'...

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 tax-competition model with a Leviathan state. It is seen that the...

We review the claim that the field of political economy has witnessed a quantum leap with Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini´s The Economic Effects of Constitutions. We find that the approach of Persson and Tabellini suffers from the neglect of previous research, notably in public choice...

I examine the process that led to major reforms in agriculture in Sweden, culminating in 1990. Economists were largely responsible for putting the issue on the agenda. Using a public choice perspective, they reformulated the debate. Who benefited, who paid, and what were the true costs? The...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the interaction of enforcement and adjudication for general deterrence of drunk-driving. The authors present a triangular feedback model between three domains: police, courts and drunk-driving events. The authors’ deductive approach imposes no...

Purpose Strengthening the middle class has become a major policy goal in both developed and developing economies due to its social, economic, cultural and political importance. Keeping in view the importance of middle class, the purpose of this paper is to measure the size of the middle class in...

Purpose – The paper aims to propose an analytical framework for social influence and mathematical formulation for its main components: conformity and peer-pressure. The framework is conceived to explain why certain behaviours and beliefs propagate in a society and some others disappear. It can...