We study how the number of ballot propositions affects the quality of decision making in direct democracy, as reflected in citizens' knowledge, voting behavior, and attitudes toward democracy. Using three comprehensive data sets from Switzerland with over 3,500 propositions, we exploit variation...

The term "party system", explained Giovanni Sartori, refers to the pattern of interactions among major parties. That pattern can be represented as a type and treated as a proper unit of analysis. When "party system" is defined in this way, it becomes clear that the scholarship lacks a direct...

The purpose of this paper is to explore in greater detail the nexus between party system change and democratic qualities. In doing so, we do not simply assess whether, how and to what extent qualities of democracy in East Africa are affected by the instability of the patterns of inter-party...

We examine whether government ideology was correlated with the growth in military expenditure in Germany over the period 1951-2011. By using various measures of government ideology, the results do not show any effect. The exception is an ideology measure based on the Comparative Manifesto...

Making the taxes acceptable to large number of people by allocating their obligation to the chosen project is the main subject of this paper. In this way a greater objectivity, transparency and local goals are set in according to the preferences of the tax contributors. State Investment office...

This paper aims to the analysis of the rules electoral effects on fiscal policy, respect to the Italian case: in fact Italy, since 1861 until nowadays, modified several times its electoral system, switching from the majoritarian to the proportional system. In particular here we focus on the...

An expected utility model is used to analyze the allocation decision of an incumbent politician in dividing public funds between expenditures on public goods and pure rents. Comparative statics analysis reveals that while the result for improvements in transparency is ambiguous in terms of...

We investigate the origins of identity and the innate proclivity to draw a distinction between `insiders' and `outsiders'. We propose an evolutionary explanation: we argue that identity arises because it facilitates survival. In an evolutionary setting we endogenize preferences and demonstrate...

Recent studies in psychology and neuroscience find that fictional works exert strong influence on readers and shape their opinions and worldviews. We study the Potterian economy, which we compare to economic models, to assess how Harry Potter books affect economic literacy. We find that some...