Storable Votes


Book Description

Storable votes allow the minority to win occasionally while treating every voter equally and increasing the efficiency of decision-making, without the need for external knowledge of voters' preferences. This book complements the theoretical discussion with several experiments, showing that the promise of the idea is borne out by the data: the outcomes of the experiments and the payoffs realized match very closely the predictions of the theory.




Optimal Unemployment Insurance


Book Description

Designing a good unemployment insurance scheme is a delicate matter. In a system with no or little insurance, households may be subject to a high income risk, whereas excessively generous unemployment insurance systems are known to lead to high unemployment rates and are costly both from a fiscal perspective and for society as a whole. Andreas Pollak investigates what an optimal unemployment insurance system would look like, i.e. a system that constitutes the best possible compromise between income security and incentives to work. Using theoretical economic models and complex numerical simulations, he studies the effects of benefit levels and payment durations on unemployment and welfare. As the models allow for considerable heterogeneity of households, including a history-dependent labor productivity, it is possible to analyze how certain policies affect individuals in a specific age, wealth or skill group. The most important aspect of an unemployment insurance system turns out to be the benefits paid to the long-term unemployed. If this parameter is chosen too high, a large number of households may get caught in a long spell of unemployment with little chance of finding work again. Based on the predictions in these models, the so-called "Hartz IV" labor market reform recently adopted in Germany should have highly favorable effects on the unemployment rates and welfare in the long run.




International Trade Agreements And Political Economy


Book Description

This book presents a comprehensive view of recent developments in the theory of international trade agreements and political economy, by focusing on research by Raymond Riezman. This pioneering work introduced terms of trade effects and strategic behavior to the theory of international trade agreements. This is complemented by a careful analysis of how politics affects international trade agreements.The book brings together work which focuses on the question of why international trade agreements occur and what forms they take.




The Handbook of Experimental Economics, Volume 2


Book Description

An indispensable survey of new developments and results in experimental economics When The Handbook of Experimental Economics first came out in 1995, the notion of economists conducting lab experiments to generate data was relatively new. Since then, the field has exploded. This second volume of the Handbook covers some of the most exciting new growth areas in experimental economics, presents the latest results and experimental methods, and identifies promising new directions for future research. Featuring contributions by leading practitioners, the Handbook describes experiments in macroeconomics, charitable giving, neuroeconomics, other-regarding preferences, market design, political economy, subject population effects, gender effects, auctions, and learning and the economics of small decisions. Contributors focus on key developments and report on experiments, highlighting the dialogue between experimenters and theorists. While most of the experiments consist of laboratory studies, the book also includes several chapters that report extensively on field experiments related to the subject area studied. Covers exciting new growth areas in experimental economics Features contributions by leading experts Describes experiments in macroeconomics, charitable giving, neuroeconomics, market design, political economy, gender effects, auctions, and more Highlights the dialogue by experimenters with theorists and each other Includes several chapters covering field experiments related to the subject area studied




The Political Economy of Predation


Book Description

This book analyses conflict theory through one type of conflict in particular: manhunting, or predation.




The Political Value of Time


Book Description

Waiting periods and deadlines are so ubiquitous that we often take them for granted. Yet they form a critical part of any democratic architecture. When a precise moment or amount of time is given political importance, we ought to understand why this is so. The Political Value of Time explores the idea of time within democratic theory and practice. Elizabeth F. Cohen demonstrates how political procedures use quantities of time to confer and deny citizenship rights. Using specific dates and deadlines, states carve boundaries around a citizenry. As time is assigned a form of political value it comes to be used to transact over rights. Cohen concludes with a normative analysis of the ways in which the devaluation of some people's political time constitutes a widely overlooked form of injustice. This book shows readers how and why they need to think about time if they want to understand politics.




Experimental Political Science


Book Description

An exploration of core problems in experimental research on voting behaviour and political institutions, ranging from design and data analysis to inferences with respect to constructs, constituencies and causal claims. The focus of is on the implementation of principles in experimental political science and the reflection of actual practices.







Institutions, Property Rights, and Economic Growth


Book Description

This volume showcases the impact of the work of Douglass North, winner of the Nobel Prize and father of the field of new institutional economics. Leading scholars contribute to a substantive discussion that best illustrates the broad reach and depth of Professor North's work. The volume speaks concisely about his legacy across multiple social sciences disciplines, specifically on scholarship pertaining to the understanding of property rights, the institutions that support the system of property rights, and economic growth.




The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy


Book Description

Over its long lifetime, "political economy" has had many different meanings: the science of managing the resources of a nation so as to provide wealth to its inhabitants for Adam Smith; the study of how the ownership of the means of production influenced historical processes for Marx; the study of the inter-relationship between economics and politics for some twentieth-century commentators; and for others, a methodology emphasizing individual rationality (the economic or "public choice" approach) or institutional adaptation (the sociological version). This Handbook views political economy as a grand (if imperfect) synthesis of these various strands, treating political economy as the methodology of economics applied to the analysis of political behavior and institutions. This Handbook surveys the field of political economy, with 58 chapters ranging from micro to macro, national to international, institutional to behavioral, methodological to substantive. Chapters on social choice, constitutional theory, and public economics are set alongside ones on voters, parties and pressure groups, macroeconomics and politics, capitalism and democracy, and international political economy and international conflict.