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The Political Economy of Benefits and Costs: A Neoclassical Approach to Distributive Politics
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In this article, a rational political explanation for the notorious inefficiency of pork-barrel projects with an optimization model of legislative behavior and legislative institutions is presented. But the model emphasizes the importance of the geographic incidence of benefits and costs owing to the geographic basis for political representation.Abstract:
This essay offers a rational political explanation for the notorious inefficiency of pork barrel projects with an optimization model of legislative behavior and legislative institutions. The model emphasizes the (economically arbitrary, from a welfare point of view) importance of the geographic incidence of benefits and costs owing to the geographic basis for political representation. We explore the implications of a legislator's objective function and derive conditions under which a representative legislature will select an omnibus of projects each of which exceeds the efficient scale.read more
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Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work
TL;DR: In this paper, Veto players analysis of European Union Institutions is presented, focusing on the role of individual veto players and collective players in the analysis of the institutions of the European Union.
Posted Content
Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a model that links heterogeneity of preferences across ethnic groups in a city to the amount and type of public goods the city supplies, and conclude that ethnic conflict is an important determinant of local public finances.
Journal ArticleDOI
Text as Data: The Promise and Pitfalls of Automatic Content Analysis Methods for Political Texts
TL;DR: A survey of automated text analysis for political science can be found in this article, where the authors provide guidance on how to validate the output of the models and clarify misconceptions and errors in the literature.
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Public goods and ethnic divisions
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a model that links heterogeneity of preferences across ethnic groups in a city to the amount and type of public goods the city supplies, showing that the shares of spending on productive public goods - education, roads, sewers, and trash pickup - in U.S. cities (metro areas/urban counties) are inversely related to the city's ethnic fragmentation.
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The political system of European Union
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explained the EU political system and the decision-making procedures of the European Union, focusing on the role of the Single Market and the single market's role in the political system.
References
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An Economic Theory of Democracy
TL;DR: Downs presents a rational calculus of voting that has inspired much of the later work on voting and turnout as discussed by the authors, particularly significant was his conclusion that a rational voter should almost never bother to vote.
Book
The Theory of Economic Regulation
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit, and that the state has one basic resource which in pure principle is not shared with even the mightiest of its citizens.
Journal ArticleDOI
The calculus of consent : logical foundations of constitutional democracy
James M. Buchanan,Gordon Tullock +1 more
TL;DR: The Calculus of Consents as mentioned in this paper analyzes the calculus of the rational individual when faced with questions of constitutional choice and examines the (choice) process extensively only with reference to the problem of decision-making rules.
Book
Bureaucracy and representative government
TL;DR: Niskanen as mentioned in this paper developed a formal theory of supply by bureaus and developed a simple theory of the market for public services financed through a representative government; the final section suggests a set of changes to improve the performance of our bureaucratic and political institutions, based both on theory and professional experience.