Journal ArticleDOI
On the Rationale of Group Decision-making
TLDR
In this article, the authors provide a type of reasoning which will contribute to the development of the theory of tradeunions, the firm, and the cartel; and provide the basis for a theory of the equilibrium distribution of taxation or of public expenditure.Abstract:
When a decision is reached by voting or is arrived at by a group all of whose members are not in complete accord, there is no part of economic theory which applies. This paper is intended to help fill this gap; to provide a type of reasoning which will contribute to the development of the theory of tradeunions, the firm, and the cartel; and to provide the basis for a theory of the equilibrium distribution of taxation or of public expenditure. Still other uses of the theory might be not less important. For reasons of space we avoid discussion of many points that demand fuller treatment and only attempt to indicate the course of the argument.read more
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The Theory of Incentives: The Principal-Agent Model
TL;DR: Laffont and Martimort as mentioned in this paper focus on the principal-agent model, the "simple" situation where a principal, or company, delegates a task to a single agent through a contract, the essence of management and contract theory.
Journal ArticleDOI
Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
Martin Gilens,Benjamin I. Page +1 more
Abstract: Each of four theoretical traditions in the study of American politics—which can be characterized as theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic-Elite Domination, and two types of interest-group pluralism, Majoritarian Pluralism and Biased Pluralism—offers different predictions about which sets of actors have how much influence over public policy: average citizens; economic elites; and organized interest groups, mass-based or business-oriented. A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. We report on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues. Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
Book
Fairness and redistribution
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show how the interaction between social beliefs and welfare policies may lead to multiple equilibria or multiple steady states, and explain the cross-country variation in perceptions about income inequality and choices of redistributive policies.
Journal ArticleDOI
Budget spillovers and fiscal policy interdependence: Evidence from the states
TL;DR: In this article, the authors formalized and tested the notion that states' expenditures depend on the spending of similarly situated states, and they found that even after allowing for fixed state effects, year effects, and common random shocks among neighbors, a state government's level of per capita expenditure is positively and significantly affected by the expenditure levels of its neighbors.
Journal ArticleDOI
On strategy-proofness and single peakedness
TL;DR: In this article, it was shown that all strategy-proof anonymous and efficient voting schemes can be derived from the Condorcet procedure by simply adding some fixed ballots to the agent's ballots, with the only restriction that the number of fixed ballots is strictly less than the total number of agents.