The economic slow-down of several States in India including Gujarat during the later half of 90s has caused considerable disturbance in the State's fiscal equilibrium. The fiscal deficit has more than doubled during last five years and government's debt has jumped up from 17 percent of GSDP to...

In this classic introductory public choice text, Gordon Tullock analyses the motives and activities of politicians, civil servants and voters. Government 'servants' can most likely be assumed to be pursuing their own interests, just like those in the private sector, although, given the coercive...

In U.S. elections, voters often vote for candidates from different parties for president and Congress. Voters also express dissatisfaction with the performance of Congress as a whole and satisfaction with their own representative. We develop a model of split-ticket voting in which government...

We contribute to the political economy of public sector growth by integrating the analysis of three factors: (i) the 'demand' for government, stemming from attempts to coercively redistribute as well as from the ordinary demand for public services, often analyzed in a median voter framework;...

How well did the Social Security system do last year? According to the most recent annual report prepared by system's Board of Trustees, the Social Security trust funds showed a $165.4 billion net increase in assets in 2002 and reported accumulated reserves of nearly $1.4 trillion by year end....

In many Swiss cantons, new government programs must be approved by a referendum of citizens before money can be spent. Referendums seem like a natural way to address citizen-legislator agency problems, yet statistical evidence on how referendums affect spending decisions is almost nonexistent....

The world’s leading economies, both developed and developing, are engaged in an ever changing economic symbiosis that is governed in large part by demographics and technological change, but also by pension, healthcare, and other fiscal policies. This interconnected economic evolution - what...

Past climate change literature paid great attention to the welfare analysis of international agreements that stabilize emissions over time on the basis of the New Welfare Economics approach claiming “objective” measures of well-being and excluding interpersonal comparisons. In this paper, by...

This paper contributes to the understanding of empirically-oriented work on the size of government by integrating the analysis of three basic elements: (i) the 'demand' for government stemming in part from attempts to coercively redistribute, often analyzed in a median voter framework; (ii) the...

This paper describes the risks implied by a mixed system of Social Security pension benefits with different combinations of pay-as-you-go taxes and personal retirement account (PRA) saving. The analysis shows how these risks can be reduced by using alternative private market guarantee...