{"title":"Political Trust and the Success of Fiscal Consolidations","authors":"D. Győrffy","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1036881","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1036881","url":null,"abstract":"The paper examines the effects of political trust on fiscal consolidations. Building on the works of Easton (1965) and Gamson (1968) a theoretical framework is derived on the main channels through which the success of fiscal consolidation can be affected by the level of political trust in the system. The predictions of the theory are tested quantitatively based on evidence from the Economic and Monetary Union and qualitatively through a most-likely - least-likely case comparison between Hungary and Sweden. The results provide strong support for the hypotheses and indicate that in the absence of external pressures lasting fiscal consolidations can take place only in a high-trust regime. In a low-trust regime even if an external crisis triggers adjustment, the incentive to buy support through short-term promises ultimately erodes the commitment to restraint and imbalances reemerge.","PeriodicalId":413544,"journal":{"name":"Public Choice (Topic)","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131757441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Model of Reputation in Cheap Talk","authors":"Lars Frisell, J. Lagerlöf","doi":"10.1111/j.1467-9442.2007.00480.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9442.2007.00480.x","url":null,"abstract":"We study a dynamic game of advice where the sender's preferences are unknown to the receiver. The novel feature of the model is that there is more than one type of biased sender. We show that the more equal the proportions of different biases in the sender population, the greater the credibility of the information transmitted. Somewhat surprisingly, however, we also find that the receiver does not benefit from this equality. We discuss our results in the context of political lobbying and show that institutions that increase transparency lower lobbyists' incentives for truthtelling, but unambiguously promote the policymaker's welfare.","PeriodicalId":413544,"journal":{"name":"Public Choice (Topic)","volume":"148 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116536234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bicameralism and Government Formation, Second Version","authors":"D. Diermeier, Hülya Eraslan, Antonio Merlo","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.962395","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.962395","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we present a structural approach to the study of government formation in multi-party parliamentary democracies. The approach is based on the estimation of a stochastic bargaining model which we use to investigate the effects of specific institutional features of parliamentary democracy on the formation and stability of coalition governments. We then apply our methodology to estimate the effects of governmental bicameralism. Our main findings are that eliminating bicameralism does not affect government durability, but does have a significant effect on the composition of governments leading to smaller coalitions. These results are due to an equilibrium replacement effect: removing bicameralism affects the relative durability of coalitions of different sizes which in turn induces changes in the coalitions that are chosen in equilibrium.","PeriodicalId":413544,"journal":{"name":"Public Choice (Topic)","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123670239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Production and Consumption of Education in a R&D-Based Growth Model","authors":"Juntip Boonprakaikawe, Frédéric Tournemaine","doi":"10.1111/j.1467-9485.2006.00395.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.2006.00395.x","url":null,"abstract":"We develop a R&D-based growth model with endogenous accumulation of human capital. We investigate the idea that education is a good entering in the preferences of individuals. We seek to analyse how the decisions of individuals to invest in human capital can be altered by changes in economic policies and how they can be reflected on the level of growth in the long run. We show that policy changes affect growth through their effect on the decision of individuals to invest in human capital. The effects obtained depend whether individuals enjoy to acquire education or if they consider it as a bad. In the absence of any policy intervention, the level of growth can be excessive or insufficient compared with the optimum.","PeriodicalId":413544,"journal":{"name":"Public Choice (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130575754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Capital Regulation and Loan Monitoring in a Diverse Banking System","authors":"David D. VanHoose","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.923391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.923391","url":null,"abstract":"Building on the literature emphasizing banks’ monitoring functions, recent contributions to the literature examining the effects of capital regulation have focused attention on the influences of capital requirements on bank incentives to monitor loans for moral hazard risks. Empirical evidence suggests that this is a potentially important issue to contemplate when judging the usefulness of capital regulation as a means of reducing banking risks. This evidence also suggests, however, that various heterogeneities, which are commonly ignored in studies of the effects of capital regulation on bank monitoring and overall asset risk, are an important feature of real-world banking markets. In theory, bank heterogeneities can affect the manner in which the entire banking system responds to external shocks, such as the imposition of capital requirements. A few recent studies cast light on how diversity relating to loan-monitoring activities of banks affects their decision making and thereby influences market outcomes, which in turn feed back to alter individual bank choices regarding whether or how much to monitor their loans. In this way, the policy implications of capital regulation differ from those forthcoming from standard studies of banking systems populated by identical, representative banks.","PeriodicalId":413544,"journal":{"name":"Public Choice (Topic)","volume":"96 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126092202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Optimal Linear Income Tax When Highly-Skilled Individuals Vote with Their Feet","authors":"Laurent Simula, A. Trannoy","doi":"10.17863/CAM.5483","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.5483","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines how allowing individuals to emigrate to pay lower taxes changes the optimal non-linear income tax scheme in a Mirrleesian economy. Type-dependent participation constraints are borrowed from contract theory. An individual emigrates if his domestic utility is less than his utility abroad net of migration costs, utilities and costs both depending on productivity. Three social criteria are distinguished according to the agents whose welfare matters. Mobility significantly alters the closed-economy results qualitatively, but also quantitatively as veri.ed by simulations. A curse of the middle-skilled occurs in the first-best. In the second-best, the middle-skilled can support the highest average tax rates and the marginal tax rates can be negative. Moreover, preventing emigration of the highly-skilled is not necessarily optimal.","PeriodicalId":413544,"journal":{"name":"Public Choice (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129607014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rental Choice and Housing Policy Realignment in Transition: Post-Privatization Challenges in the Europe and Central Asia Region","authors":"W. Brzeski, Hans Joachim Dubel, Ellen Hamilton","doi":"10.1596/1813-9450-3884","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-3884","url":null,"abstract":"Massive privatizations of housing in Europe and Central Asia transition countries have significantly reduced rental tenure choice, threatening to impede residential mobility. Policymakers are intensifying their search for adequate policy responses aimed at broadening tenure choice for more household categories through effective rental housing alternatives in the social and private sectors. While the social alternative requires substantial and well-balanced subsidies, the private alternative will not grow unless rent, management, and tax reforms are boldly implemented and housing privatization truly completed.","PeriodicalId":413544,"journal":{"name":"Public Choice (Topic)","volume":"148 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115383405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Participation and Schooling in a Public System of Higher Education","authors":"Stijn Kelchtermans, F. Verboven","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.922264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.922264","url":null,"abstract":"We analyze the determinants of participation (whether to study) and schooling (where and what to study) in a public system of higher education, based on a unique dataset of all eligible high school pupils in an essentially closed region (Flanders). We find that pupils perceive the available institutions and programs as close substitutes, implying an ambiguous role for travel costs: they hardly affect the participation decisions, but have a strong impact on the schooling decisions. In addition, high school background plays an important role in both the participation and schooling decisions. To illustrate how our empirical results can inform the debate on reforming public systems, we assess the effects of tuition fee increases. Uniform cost-based tuition fee increases achieve most of the welfare gains; the additional gains from fee differentiation are relatively unimportant. These welfare gains are quite large if one makes conservative assumptions on the social cost of public funds, and there is a substantial redistribution from students to outsiders.","PeriodicalId":413544,"journal":{"name":"Public Choice (Topic)","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133276370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Equilibrium Implications of Fiscal Policy with Tax Evasion","authors":"B. Chiarini, F. Busato, G. Rey","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.899548","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.899548","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies equilibrium effects of fiscal policy within a dynamic general equilibrium model where tax evasion and underground activities are explicitly incorporated. There are three main results. (i) The underground sector mitigates the distortionary impact of fiscal policies, while lessening the drop (rise) of aggregate production after restrictive (expansionary) tax shifts. In this respect, tax evasion and the informal economy offer a channel for insuring income and consumption from distortions generated by fiscal policy. (ii) Tax evasion and underground economy can completely reverse the theoretical predictions of the standard neoclassical growth model and rationalize expansionary responses to contractionary fiscal policies. (iii) A dynamic general equilibrium with tax evasion gives a rational justification for a variant of the Laffer curve.","PeriodicalId":413544,"journal":{"name":"Public Choice (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132862715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Soumaya M. Tohamy, Hashem Dezhbakhsh, Peter H. Aranson
{"title":"A New Theory of the Budgetary Process","authors":"Soumaya M. Tohamy, Hashem Dezhbakhsh, Peter H. Aranson","doi":"10.1111/j.1468-0343.2006.00162.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0343.2006.00162.x","url":null,"abstract":"This paper offers an alternative to the view that budgetary decisions are incremental because they are complex, extensive, and conflicted. Our model interprets incrementalism as the result of a legislative political strategy in response to interest group politics and economic conditions. Accordingly, a legislator chooses between single-period budgeting or multiperiod budgeting, where single-period budgeting is associated with a greater chance of non-incremental budgeting outcomes. We use a statistical procedure developed by Dezhbakhsh et al. (2003) for identifying non-incremental outcomes to test the implications of the model. Results support the model's predictions: a higher discount rate and a persistently large deficit appear to cause departures from incremental budgeting; Democrats' control over the political process have a similar effect, while a higher inflation rate has an opposite effect.","PeriodicalId":413544,"journal":{"name":"Public Choice (Topic)","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128479782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}