This paper reviews the economic theories of regulation. It discusses the public and private interest theories of regulation, as the criticisms that have been leveled at them. The extent to which these theories are also able to account for privatization and deregulation is evaluated and policies...

This paper reviews the familiar “dilemma of Condorcet”, dealing with the voting by simple majority problem, studied by Duncan Black and Kenneth Arrow, to highlight the importance of a discretionary manipulation of the political agenda in a representative democracy. The dilemma is used to...

International efforts on abating climate change, focusing on reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, have thus far proved unsuccessful. This motivates exploration of other strategies such as climate engineering. We modify the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (DICE), and use it...

The paper starts with a theoretical reinterpretation of some classical topics in the public choice literature, where specific elements of contract theory and the theory of the firm are introduced. By putting into contact these completely different fields of economics, it defines a general...

The paper is an account of the development of laboratory experimental methods in the early 1970s as influenced by the fields of Public Choice and Social Choice. Just a few key experiments conducted during a period when no experimental markets research was taking place, provide a bridge with the...

I combine a field experiment with a change in voting laws reducing the fine for abstention to assess the effects of monetary incentives to encourage voter participation. Using individual-level experimental variation in the perceived reduction of the fine for abstention and an objective measure...

Members of the European Currency Union and even a majority of all other Member States of the European Union are faced with high public and private depts. It is almost obvious that many Member States will have a problem with repaying depts and even are endanger to fall through interest payment....

--process which respects social preferences for territorial planning. That?s why these methods are no longer the appropriate framework to build collective choice. The increasing volume of land-use conflicts proves that it is more and more difficult to carry out new projects, particularly in...

There has been a division of labor in the “behavioral sciences”. This is perhaps most striking in two of the largest behavioral disciplines, economics and psychology. Since 1990, a number of economists have crossed this boundary. But James Buchanan was one of the first economists to take the...

This paper introduces an informal model of behavior of Politicians and Social Leaders in their mutual relations in the context of influencing the beliefs of voters. Facing uncertainty about Politicians voters turn to Social Leaders as information short-cuts. Leaders include NGOs, the media and...