Public Choice最新文献

We apply tournament theory to congressional leadership to unify research on campaign finance with theories of endogenous party strength. Parties want to incentivize members to do costly work for the benefit of the party, such as fundraising. Accordingly, they make leadership offices attractive and award these leadership offices on the basis of who does the most work for the party. The more attractive the leadership office becomes, the harder party members work to win. We present a model to formalize this argument, derive its empirical implications, and find support for these implications using data from committee assignments, committee authorizations, and fundraising for leadership political action committees and congressional hill committees.

Affirmative action in India reserves explicit proportions of seats and jobs in publicly funded institutions for various beneficiary groups. Because seats are indivisible and arise in small numbers over time, implementation of this policy requires that beneficiary groups take turns claiming seats, for which purpose India relies on a device called a roster. We study the problem of constructing a roster, which involves addressing a series of connected apportionment problems. To identify suitable apportionment methods, six essential requirements direct our search to a large class of divisor methods. We show that the Webster–Sainte-Laguë method is the unique divisor method that satisfies several practical properties and fairness criteria. Comparative analysis between an existing Indian roster and the application of the Webster–Sainte-Laguë method highlights that method’s benefits.

We investigate the impact of the number of local governments in a metropolitan area on housing values within the United States. We find that metropolitan areas with one standard deviation more counties have housing values that are almost 11% higher. This difference may be driven by the fact that we also find higher wages (accounting for worker characteristics) in areas with more local governments. Moreover, we find that areas with more local governments have more business-friendly policies, such as freer labor markets, but similar levels of taxation and spending. The number of local governments does not seem to significantly impact environmental quality, educational outcomes, or crime.

This paper revisits a long-standing discussion surrounding the efficacy of the common law versus government intervention in addressing large-scale environmental externalities. Drawing on a conceptual framework developed by James M. Buchanan, we challenge the prevailing economic orthodoxy which holds that so-called “large-number” externalities inherently necessitate government policy intervention. Instead, we argue that the common law offers a viable means of addressing both small- and large-scale environmental pollution problems. Using riparian and nuisance cases from the nineteenth and early twentieth-century as a case study, we demonstrate how common law has historically managed to resolve water pollution disputes, even in cases involving many parties. The paper expands the discussion on externalities by integrating insights from environmental and institutional economics, highlighting the role played by transaction costs, collective action, and institutional reform in the preservation of environmental resources. Our findings suggest that a more polycentric system of rules, relying more heavily on decentralized legal institutions, could offer more efficient and adaptable solutions to contemporary environmental challenges.