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Author: Jean-Jacques Laffont Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198294247 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 270
Book Description
Mainstream economics has recognized only recently the necessity to incorporate political constraints into economic analysis intended for policy advisors. Incentives and Political Economy uses recent advances in contract theory to build a normative approach to constitutional design in economic environments.The first part of the book remains in the tradition of benevolent constitutional design with complete contracting. It treats politicians as informed supervisors and studies how the Constitution should control them, in particular to avoid capture by interest groups. Incentive theories for the separation of powers or systems of checks and balances are developed.The second part of the book recognises the incompleteness of the constitutional contract which leaves discretion to the politicans selected by the electoral process. Asymmetric information associates information rents with economic policies and the political game becomes a game of costly redistribution of those rents. Professor Laffont investigates the trade-offs between an inflexible constitution which leaves little discretion to politicians but sacrifices ex post efficiency and a constitutionweighted towards ex post efficiency but also giving considerable discretion to politicians to pursue private agendas.The final part of the book reconsiders the modeling of collusion given asymmetric information. It proposes a new approach to characterizing incentives constraints for group behaviour when asymmetric information is non-verifiable. This provides a methodology to characterise the optimal constitutional response to activities of interest groups and to study the design of any institution in which group behavior is important.
Author: Jean-Jacques Laffont Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198294247 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 270
Book Description
Mainstream economics has recognized only recently the necessity to incorporate political constraints into economic analysis intended for policy advisors. Incentives and Political Economy uses recent advances in contract theory to build a normative approach to constitutional design in economic environments.The first part of the book remains in the tradition of benevolent constitutional design with complete contracting. It treats politicians as informed supervisors and studies how the Constitution should control them, in particular to avoid capture by interest groups. Incentive theories for the separation of powers or systems of checks and balances are developed.The second part of the book recognises the incompleteness of the constitutional contract which leaves discretion to the politicans selected by the electoral process. Asymmetric information associates information rents with economic policies and the political game becomes a game of costly redistribution of those rents. Professor Laffont investigates the trade-offs between an inflexible constitution which leaves little discretion to politicians but sacrifices ex post efficiency and a constitutionweighted towards ex post efficiency but also giving considerable discretion to politicians to pursue private agendas.The final part of the book reconsiders the modeling of collusion given asymmetric information. It proposes a new approach to characterizing incentives constraints for group behaviour when asymmetric information is non-verifiable. This provides a methodology to characterise the optimal constitutional response to activities of interest groups and to study the design of any institution in which group behavior is important.
Author: Nathan M. Jensen Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108311423 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 271
Book Description
Policies targeting individual companies for economic development incentives, such as tax holidays and abatements, are generally seen as inefficient, economically costly, and distortionary. Despite this evidence, politicians still choose to use these policies to claim credit for attracting investment. Thus, while fiscal incentives are economically inefficient, they pose an effective pandering strategy for politicians. Using original surveys of voters in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as data on incentive use by politicians in the US, Vietnam and Russia, this book provides compelling evidence for the use of fiscal incentives for political gain and shows how such pandering appears to be associated with growing economic inequality. As national and subnational governments surrender valuable tax revenue to attract businesses in the vain hope of long-term economic growth, they are left with fiscal shortfalls that have been filled through regressive sales taxes, police fines and penalties, and cuts to public education.
Author: Philip Keefer Publisher: World Bank Publications ISBN: 0031210104 Category : Democracy Languages : en Pages : 36
Book Description
Countries vary systematically with respect to the incentives of politicians to provide broad public goods, and to reduce poverty. Even in developing countries that are democracies, politicians often have incentives to divert resources to political rents, and to private transfers that benefit a few citizens at the expense of many. These distortions can be traced to imperfections in political markets, that are greater in some countries than in others. The authors review the theory, and evidence on the impact of incomplete information of voters, the lack of credibility of political promises, and social polarization on political incentives. They argue that the effects of these imperfections are large, but that their implications are insufficiently integrated into the design of policy reforms aimed at improving the provision of public goods, and reducing poverty.
Author: Timothy J. Bartik Publisher: W.E. Upjohn Institute ISBN: 0880996684 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 180
Book Description
Bartik provides a clear and concise overview of how state and local governments employ economic development incentives in order to lure companies to set up shop—and provide new jobs—in needy local labor markets. He shows that many such incentive offers are wasteful and he provides guidance, based on decades of research, on how to improve these programs.
Author: Samuel Bowles Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300221088 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 283
Book Description
Should the idea of economic man—the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus—determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding “no.” Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may “crowd out” ethical and generous motives and thus backfire. But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer thinks the workforce is lazy, or that the citizen cannot otherwise be trusted to contribute to the public good. Using historical and recent case studies as well as behavioral experiments, Bowles shows how well-designed incentives can crowd in the civic motives on which good governance depends.
Author: K. Thomas Publisher: Springer ISBN: 0230302394 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 217
Book Description
This is a global study of government subsidies to attract investment. The book shows how corporations use site selection as rent extraction, with developing countries investing more than developed ones. It demonstrates that incentive use is rarely a good policy, especially for countries without adequate education and infrastructure.
Author: Kym Anderson Publisher: World Bank Publications ISBN: 0821376667 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 682
Book Description
This volume in the 'Distortions to Agricultural Incentives' series focus on distortions to agricultural incentives from a global perspective.
Author: Jean-Jacques Laffont Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400829453 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 436
Book Description
Economics has much to do with incentives--not least, incentives to work hard, to produce quality products, to study, to invest, and to save. Although Adam Smith amply confirmed this more than two hundred years ago in his analysis of sharecropping contracts, only in recent decades has a theory begun to emerge to place the topic at the heart of economic thinking. In this book, Jean-Jacques Laffont and David Martimort present the most thorough yet accessible introduction to incentives theory to date. Central to this theory is a simple question as pivotal to modern-day management as it is to economics research: What makes people act in a particular way in an economic or business situation? In seeking an answer, the authors provide the methodological tools to design institutions that can ensure good incentives for economic agents. This book focuses 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. How does the owner or manager of a firm align the objectives of its various members to maximize profits? Following a brief historical overview showing how the problem of incentives has come to the fore in the past two centuries, the authors devote the bulk of their work to exploring principal-agent models and various extensions thereof in light of three types of information problems: adverse selection, moral hazard, and non-verifiability. Offering an unprecedented look at a subject vital to industrial organization, labor economics, and behavioral economics, this book is set to become the definitive resource for students, researchers, and others who might find themselves pondering what contracts, and the incentives they embody, are really all about.
Author: J.B. Opschoor Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 9401108560 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
This book contains a collection of papers on economic incentives and environmental policies which result from the authors' joint research work in the program `Environment, Science and Society', conducted under the auspices of the European Science Foundation, with whose cooperation the book has been published. The work concentrates on the scientific and methodological aspects of the development, implementation and evaluation of economic instruments at a national level. The research is both theoretical and empirical. At a theoretical level attention is given to the dynamics of instrument choice in various political and economic contexts, and to the means for evaluating economic instruments in terms of their effectiveness and efficiency. At an empirical level the research seeks to investigate the performance of economic instruments in reality and to explore options for new approaches on the interface between technology, economy and the environment. A subject index complements this first volume in the ESF `Environment, Science and Society' series.
Author: Jean-Jacques Laffont
Author: Jean-Jacques Laffont
Author: Nathan M. Jensen
Author: Donald E. Campbell
Author: Philip Keefer
Author: Timothy J. Bartik
Author: Samuel Bowles
Author: K. Thomas
Author: Kym Anderson
Author: Jean-Jacques Laffont
Author: J.B. Opschoor