This paper tests the Political Legislation Cycle theory on French data. The theory predicts a peak of legislative production in the pre-electoral period, when the legislator increases voters’ utility in order to be reelected. France is unique in that two elections set up the pace of political...

We use data about the Italian Constitutional Court (1956-2005) to verify an implication of the “revisionist” explanations of judicial independence with respect to judicial appointments, namely that elected politicians reward more independent justices with appointments after the Court tenure....

The present study aims to test Meltzer and Richard’s (1981) hypothesis that lower-income individuals vote for candidates who favor higher taxes and more redistribution. Assuming that left-wing parties advocate a general increase in taxation, we estimate a vote function for the French Cantonal...

We propose a simple non-cooperative game model where two fragmented teams compete to increase their performance. The theoretical framework is based on the theory of conflict. We show that depending on the value of a parameter in the model, the power of the competing teams may be expressed as a...

Strategic interaction in local tax setting is motivated with yardstick competition only when the fiscal decision influences the incumbents’ probability of being re-elected. Most of the previous analyses draw conclusions on yardstick competition without estimating this link or failing to find...

The present study aims to test Meltzer and Richard’s (1981) hypothesis that lower-income individuals vote for candidates who favor higher taxes and more redistribution. Assuming that left-wing parties advocate a general increase in taxation, we estimate a vote function for the French Cantonal...

This article introduces a new database focusing on the legislative production as well as the characteristics of the governments in France, from the early months of the Vth Republic in January 1959 to the end of the XIIIth legislature in March 2012. It provides a large amount of variables...

This paper empirically analyzes how political factors affect the deployment of renewable energy (RE) sources and compares it to other economic, energy and environmental drivers that have received greater attention in the literature so far. The sample encompasses the EU countries bound to attain...