Which are the determinants of the choice of ownership structure for a firm providing local public services? What are the consequences of this choice on the performance of these firms? To answer these questions we will use a unique database providing economic and financial data on 321 Italian...

We study political distortions that emerge in situations where agents’ political power is disproportionate with respect to their economic power. We use the Shapley value to evaluate both the economic and the political power. We show that usual weighted majority voting cannot prevent political...

This work provides a parametric and semi-parametric analysis of the relationship between the proportionality degree of an electoral system and corruption. This allows us to properly consider mixed electoral systems alongside the two traditional ones, proportional and plurality. Results show that...

In recent years, randomized controlled trials have become increasingly popular in the social sciences. In development economics in particular, their use has attracted considerable debate in relation to the identification of ‘what works’ in development policy. This paper focuses on a core...

The paper presents a political agency model that observes how budgetary decisions on public good production affect the prospects of holding office for an incumbent political party. A simple budgetary function is broadened to include other expenditures such as public sector wages and social...

The number of municipalities in Japan has decreased from 3,232 in 1999 to 1,820 in 2006 because of municipal mergers, called Heisei-no-Daigappei. This paper estimates the political choices of local council members in Japan’s municipal mergers. In Japan, being a local council member is a...

Evidence of Political Budget Cycles from cross-countries studies has been rationalized as coming from voter’s cost to process available information and asymmetric information. This explanation was also adopted in most cross-province studies leaving aside variables related to the incentive...

All democratic systems are theoretically open to so-called election inversions, i.e., instances wherein a majority of the decision makers prefer one alternative but where the actual outcome is another. The paper examines the complex 1975 Danish government formation process, which involved five...

What would the true government expenditure and tax burden im­pacts of California's Proposition 4 likely be if it (or its equivalent) were enacted in all 50 states? What happened to actual state plus local government expenditures per capita over the period 1970-1976 is examined. Next, we examine...

We consider a small open economy that faces a commitment problem in trade liberalization. We examine how the relationship with a large trading partner affects the ability of the small countrys government to sustain free trade through a reputational mechanism. If the small country's government is...