Public Choice最新文献

This study examines the relationship between two key factors in modern society: democracy and individualism. We hypothesize that extending democratic rights promotes individualism, which is supported by historical evidence from women’s suffrage in the US. Exploiting temporal variations in the passage of suffrage laws across states, border-county-pair analysis shows that the passage of women’s suffrage fostered individualism, as evidenced by an increase in the prevalence of uncommon names. This relationship was more pronounced in areas with higher proportions of adult white women, who were the primary beneficiaries of suffrage extension. Falsification tests confirm that the observed increase in individualism was rooted in the expansion of democratic rights, not merely in advancement of women’s rights.

This study examines the effect of various communication strategies on wage underreporting and tax compliance. Employing a field experiment with 3813 businesses in Latvia—a country marked by substantial wage underreporting—this research utilizes advanced data analytics to disseminate messages from the tax authority to firms whose declared wages substantially lag behind industry and regional averages. Messages ranged from normative appeals to audit probabilities and nudges. The immediate result was a notable increase in compliance in the first four months after the intervention, with firms elevating average wage levels. While the specific content of messages did not result in distinct long-term compliance behavior, the overall effectiveness of sending messages was affirmed. We identify a message combining 5% audit probability with normative appeals as the most effective one in enhancing tax revenues and triggering minimal negative feedback from the message receivers.

Prices are regulated in many markets, ranging from healthcare to labor to telecommunications. This paper reinterprets the variables in the basic supply–demand model so that both product-definition and quantity are equilibrium outcomes. Specifically, compliance with price controls is achieved by altering the production-factor mix along the supply chain. This approach yields surprising insights into the incidence of price regulations and their effects on the amount of trade. Furthermore, it reveals how many of the short-run effects of price controls can be opposite of what they are in the long run. The supply-chain framework also easily represents business-to-business price controls, which have been more prevalent in policy practice than price-theoretic analysis.

A school of economic historians argues that the medieval church was an economic firm: not metaphorically, but literally. Their work has been virtually ignored by professional medieval historians, but it has been published by Oxford University Press and the University of Chicago Press, so it does deserve attention. Conversely, it would be healthy for economists and public choice scholars to get reactions from a historian. There appears to have been a wall between the two disciplines, an unhealthy situation. The economists discussed here see the medieval Church as a “multi-divisional firm”, “characterized by a central office [the papacy] that controls overall financial allocations and conducts strategic, long-range planning, but allows divisions (usually regional) a high degree of autonomy in day-to-day operations” (ST 1996: 20). In fact, the medieval church was a multitude of discrete systems within a common legal framework. It was certainly not an “economic firm”.

We study the welfare impact of states competing with non-discretionary incentives for firms in an industry. A simple model of state competition and firm location choice enables welfare calculation with the first-order condition for incentives and firm profit function parameters. The model implies that state values for firms must be substantially heterogeneous and negatively correlated with firm profits for state competition to improve welfare. In an application to the craft brewing industry, we estimate the profit function by instrumenting endogenous incentives with a proxy for past lobbying activities of brewers in other states. We find that state competition mostly transfers tax dollars to firms without changing their geography. This is because firm profits vary more than state values, even though states with lower firm profits value firms more.

Legacy of statehood is seen as a positive influence on economic growth and development. The state antiquity literature argues that the more experience a country has with state institutions, the more beneficial the current state’s impact on development can be. While not discounting the advantages that a well-functioning state can provide for economic progress, we draw attention to an alternate mechanism: the presence of private institutions and practices that may contribute to both state formation and economic development. Rather than state antiquity being the lone cause of economic progress, states may benefit from already existing configurations of rules and conventions that were developed privately. Thus, we argue that order can precede and coincide with the state. We support our claim with qualitative evidence using historical case studies.

We investigate differential responses by gender to competitive persuasion in political campaigns. We implemented a survey and a field experiment during two mayoral elections in Italy. Eligible voters were exposed to a positive or negative campaign by an opponent. The survey experiment used on-line videos and slogans. The field experiment used door-to-door canvassing. In both experiments, gender differences emerge. Females vote more for the opponent and less for the incumbent when exposed to positive—as opposed to negative—campaigning. Males do the opposite. These differences cannot be explained by gender identification, ideology, or other voters’ observable attributes.

This study investigates how local air quality influences UK Parliament members’ votes on environmental and climate change legislation. Using micro-spatial information at the 1 km-by-1 km grid level, I link local air quality to member of UK parliament (MPs') voting records from 2009 to 2019. I find compelling evidence that MPs representing highly polluted areas are more likely to vote against stringent environmental legislation. I also provide evidence that local political economy considerations constrain pro-environmental voting behaviour: industrialization exacerbates the negative relationship between pollution and pro-environmental voting behaviour by further discouraging MPs representing industrial areas from supporting stringent environmental legislations. These findings underscore the public choice trade-offs between enacting stringent climate change policies and preserving local industry and jobs.

External shocks (e.g., due to a pandemic) may lead to price jumps in the short term. Rather than being read as a signal of increased scarcity, the resulting “price gouging” is often ascribed to sellers’ selfish exploitation of the crisis. In our experimental study, we investigate the drivers of fairness perceptions regarding voluntary transactions in situations of increased scarcity and explore how they pertain to the economic policy debate on price gouging restrictions. Departing from previous research, our results show that perceptions of power, not of the seller as the profiteer (mercantilism), drive fairness perceptions. The more powerful a transaction partner is assumed to be, the less the respective transaction is regarded as fair. In line with the literature, we also find that fairness perceptions are correlated with zero-sum thinking (i.e., a denial of the mutuality of benefits implied by voluntary transactions). Our study helps to better understand why some market regulations appear attractive despite suboptimal outcomes, thus revealing a mixing of the micro and the macro cosmos, against which Hayek warned. By casting a light on the psychological mechanisms behind attitudes toward markets, we aim to improve the assessment of legitimacy issues and contribute to explaining (and overcoming) the moral paradox of modernity.