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Gordon Tullock's "Welfare Costs of Tariffs, Monopolies, and Theft" is by now widely regarded to be a classic work in public choice. However, like many "classic papers," it was not always so highly regarded. It was rejected at several journals before finding its way to print and arguably took two or three decades to be fully appreciated. This paper discusses developments in the public choice and rent seeking literatures that helped bring Tullock's paper to its status as a classic work in political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the work of Michel Foucault and Friedrich Hayek to understand threats to personal and enterprise freedom, arising from public health governance. Whereas public choice theory examines the incentives these institutions provide to agents, the analysis here understands those incentives as framed by discursive social constructions that affect the identity, power, and positionality of different actors. It shows how overlapping discourses of scientific rationalism may generate a 'road to serfdom' narrowing freedom of action and expression across an expanding terrain. As such, the paper contributes to the growing literature emphasising the importance of narratives, stories and metaphors as shaping political economic action in ways feeding through to outcomes and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perhaps the most important element of James Buchanan's contribution to constitutional economics is his differentiation between pre- and post-constitutional levels of decision-making. At first glance, a tension may appear between those two levels of analysis. In one, the rules by which we live are up for debate, allowing us to exercise our creative and imaginative capabilities in constitutional construction. In the other, the rules are viewed as fixed, and we are left simply to treat them as constraints. This paper explores three key elements of Buchanan's thought that allow him to navigate successfully between the two levels. The first is the importance of "the relatively absolute absolute", a concept learned from his mentor, Frank Knight. The second is Buchanan's approach to "truth judgments" in politics, and their status in our political discussions. Third, we draw on Buchanan's insights in his 1959 paper "Positive Economics, Welfare Economics, and Political Economy" to show how political economists should participate in this decision-making process—not as expert philosopher-kings, but as co-equals with their fellow citizens. Finally, we illustrate Buchanan's system of thought in action by presenting two case studies: Virginia education policy in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, and the 1928 Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Schoene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its publication in 1971, George J. Stigler's "Theory of Economic Regulation" (1971), secured its place as the dominant theory of the causes and consequences of regulation in economics. The article was cited by the economic Nobel prize committee as one of the reasons Stigler received the prize in 1982. In his article, Stigler (1971) frames the conversation regarding the "Theory of Economic Regulation" around an analysis of the political demand for and supply of regulation. Following the 50th anniversary of the 1971 paper, the contributors to this special issue evaluate the impact of his "Theory of Economic Regulation", apply it to other policy questions, and summarize the literature produced in response to his original insight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue brings together the papers presented and discussed at the James M. Buchanan Centennial Birthday Academic Conference hosted at Middle Tennessee State University. The papers appraise and extend Buchanan's contributions to the fields of public choice and constitutional political economy. This special issue demonstrates that Buchanan's scholarship continues to be relevant and fruitful for scholars working on modern scholarship in these fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue brings together the papers presented and discussed at the Harold A. Black Academic Conference hosted by the Probasco Distinguished Chair of Free Enterprise at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the Political Economy Research Institute at Middle Tennessee State University. Dr. Black is an emeritus professor of finance at the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and has had a distinguished career advancing our understanding of race and discrimination in banking and finance. More specifically, throughout his career, Dr. Black undertook in-depth empirical studies that examined the institutional details of statistically observed disparate outcomes in banking and finance to determine whether these outcomes were attributable to discrimination or could be explained by non-discriminatory factors. In some instances, Dr. Black found that addressing disparate outcomes with inappropriate policies could result in perverse consequences that harmed the intended beneficiaries. This introduction explores the relationship between Harold Black's work, the papers in this special issue examining, building on, and extending Harold Black's work, and public choice economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite Gordon Tullock's famous effort to motivate researchers to quantify investments in rent seeking, the empirical measurement of rent-seeking activity remains under-studied. This paper proposes a new estimate of rent seeking by comparing the industrial composition of MSAs that contain a state capital with those of a comparable synthetic match. Each of these synthetic matches are constructed as a weighted average of all MSAs that do not contain a state capital, where the weights are chosen via entropy balancing. This paper offers the first panel estimate of rent seeking in the United States by state and year for the years 2004–2020. We also provide the first industry-specific measures of rent seeking, in addition to aggregate indexes of traditional, in-kind, indirect, and total rent seeking. All measures of rent seeking described in this paper have been made publicly available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dr. Harold Black has made a career of investigating the effects of different rules and institutional arrangements on the extent to which market participants in finance can exercise a taste for discrimination. This paper considers the nature of Black's contributions, and reviews some particulars of his voluminous published research, focusing especially on his work on the number of "overages" charged by banks, and the differences in the effects of the race of bank owners, as explained by the race of customers. The paper concludes by connecting Dr. Black's work to his "origin story," which helps explain his consistent focus on careful empirical distinctions rather than preconceptions and biases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented which addresses the life of the late European public-choice scholar Heinrich W. Ursprung, and it mentions his Swiss upbringing and his former role as the president of the European Public Choice Society. Political competition and policy modeling in a democracy are examined, along with politicians, environmentalists, and political discretion. Collaborative relationships and independence are also assessed.

A lack of information about electoral candidates leads to a ballot order effect that increases the chances of candidates in the top electoral list positions winning voters' support. The ballot order effect is confounded by the effect of ranking and the effect of attention, which work in the same direction. We exploit a variation in ballot layout (the quasi-random location of the break between the first and second sides of the ballot) in the 2006, 2010, 2013, and 2017 Czech parliamentary open list proportional representation elections to disentangle these effects and identify the effect of attention. We show that being listed on the reverse side of the ballot paper decreases electoral support—measured by number of preferential votes received—by at least 40%. Focusing on preferential votes allows us to filter out the effect of political party preference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monetary policy and institutions are far from exempt from political influences. In this paper, we analyze monetary institutions not as being run by either benevolent technocrats or a wealth-maximizing Leviathan, but as the outcome of competition between interest groups trying to capture wealth transfers. We argue that while interest groups gaining from specific monetary policies and institutions can easily identify themselves, losers often cannot. As a result, losers have a more difficult time fighting back, and both the organization of money production and monetary policy are shaped by political competition between rent-seekers. We use our framework to analyze modern developments in monetary policies and institutions, namely (1) the Fed's reaction to the 2007 financial crisis, (2) the Fed's reaction to the COVID crisis, and (3) the establishment and development of the euro. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous cities around the world have tried to internalize externality costs from road traffic by instituting charges for entering their city centers. The revenues collected from these charges are often redistributed to improve conditions for motorists, cyclists, pedestrians, and public transport. At the same time, many schemes allow for exemption of cleaner vehicles, which potentially reduces revenue collection. This paper assesses the effect of exempting electric vehicles from urban toll ring charges on the charge that is levied on conventional car drivers. Using panel data of Norwegian cities that have urban toll rings, I exploit regional variation in electric car adaption and find that owners of conventional cars pay 3.3 NOK (0.36 USD) more per passage due to the exemption. Moreover, I find that local governments that are fragmented or have a left-wing majority increase toll charges more due to the loss in revenue. As the majority of electric vehicle owners have above-average incomes, the exemption implies a distributional effect in which low-income groups pay the largest portion of the increased toll price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a framework for understanding optimal lockdowns and makes three contributions. First, it theoretically analyzes lockdown policies and argues that policy makers systematically enact too strict lockdowns because their incentives are misaligned with achieving desired ends and they cannot adapt to changing circumstances. Second, it provides a benchmark to determine how strongly policy makers in different locations should respond to COVID-19. Finally, it provides a framework for understanding how, when, and why lockdown policy is expected to change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an attempt to contribute to the literature on how and why confidence in market participants and in the government shape the demand for market regulation, this paper contrasts two interpretations. The interpretation implicit in the empirical literature supposes that people trade off market failures for government failures. The paper argues that implicit in the broader public choice literature there is an alternative that emphasizes the nirvana fallacy and leads to the conclusion that people's views on markets and government in general is a determinant of the effect of trust on the demand for regulation. The paper applies a meta-regression analysis to examine the results of country-level regressions with different survey waves of the Integrated Values Surveys. It shows that the effect of the two kinds of trust are asymmetric and that the negative effect of the confidence in companies on the demand for government regulation is larger in countries that score higher on individualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates Gordon Tullock's unpublished manuscripts that proposed a public choice interpretation of American slavery. Drafted in response to Conrad and Meyer's seminal 1958 article on the economics of slavery, Tullock's writings influenced the early debate over slavery through his University of Virginia colleague John E. Moes. This paper uses Tullock's surviving writings to map out his theory of slavery and situate it in the broader economic analysis of the institution and identify the links between the economics of slavery and the public choice research tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent empirical literature studied the correlation between fiscal disparities and corruption, assuming that corruption is responsible for variations in tax bases (incomes), but few studies test whether local fiscal disparities may be responsible for variations in the level of corruption. Through a laboratory experiment, this paper aims to investigate the effect of fiscal disparities on local administrators' corruption detection by local voters, and the effect of simple or complex equalization formulas on corruption detection. We provide clear experimental evidence of an inverse correlation between fiscal disparity and corruption detection, and a positive effect of fiscal equalization on citizens' ability to detect corruption, the last depending on the equalization formula adopted. We demonstrate that equalization may be useful to improve the process by which subnational voters evaluate potentially corrupt governments and that the simple equalization formula, namely revenue equalization, is more effective than the complex one, namely full equalization of fiscal capacities and costs of provision of local public goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we compare deterrence, settlement, and litigation spending under adversarial and inquisitorial systems. We present a basic litigation model with three sequential stages—care, settlement, litigation—and we test the predictions on experimental data. In line with our theoretical expectations, we find that, compared with the adversarial system, the inquisitorial system is associated with lower litigation spending, lower rates of cases settled, and tends to strengthen deterrence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article lists various rules from the economist Robert D. Tollison for a knowledge-creating society, including keeping enthusiasm for new ideas, having the discipline to write and working early and often, and his belief that there is a journal for every paper.

Over the last four decades, banking crises around the globe have become longer. Along with the unprecedented government responses to the Great Recession of 2007–2008, protracted financial crises have led scholars to ask whether political decisions were somehow to blame. Despite growing concerns, little attention has been paid to the political and institutional determinants of financial crisis duration. This paper considers the role of these factors in determining the duration of systemic banking, currency, sovereign debt, and twin or triple coinciding crises. Relying on an extensive database of 125 countries observed over the 1976–2017 period and estimating a discrete-time duration model, we find that the electoral cycle, political ideology, majority governments, institutional quality, and central bank independence matter. This study shows that the duration dynamics of financial crises are idiosyncratic and must be examined individually. Finally, allowing for more flexible duration dependence patterns, we observe that the durations of both banking and twin or triple coinciding crises follow a nonmonotonic cubic model, while the probability of debt crisis ending declines monotonically over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to the introduction of rent seeking into public choice, the research program was focused primarily on collective decision-making. The incorporation of rent-seeking into public choice shifted the emphasis of the research program toward analyzing causes of government failure. Although Gordon Tullock's 1967 article clearly lays out the concept of rent-seeking, the transformation of the public choice research program by the theory of rent-seeking did not occur until after the publication of Anne Krueger's 1974 article on the rent-seeking society. This paper explains why Krueger's presentation of the paper at the Public Choice Center at Virginia Tech was instrumental in this transformative shift in the public choice research program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Should economic policy be guided by rules? In this paper, we take the perspective of the Freiburg School and trace its argument for rule-based Ordnungspolitik back to the roots of the concept. In doing so, will not offer a comprehensive review of the literature, but argue closely along the works of Walter Eucken, whose contributions are central to understanding the founding generation of the Freiburg School. We argue that not having rules is costly and therefore that the main thrust of the Freiburg approach remains valid. Good empirical arguments can be found for pursuing a rule-based Ordnungspolitik in order to avoid the costs of discretionary policymaking. Furthermore, we argue that reliance on stable rules does not incapacitate democratic decision-making. Rules rely on democratic support, and rule-based Ordnungspolitik also leaves substantial material scope for discretionary democratic decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper asks whether Walter Eucken, the founder of German ordoliberalism, should be considered to be a proponent of authoritarian liberalism. That term originally refers to a proposal for economic liberalization advanced by Carl Schmitt in 1932. Authoritarian liberalism also could be taken to mean that Eucken favors the rule of law and economic freedoms, but rejects democratic decision making. Both possible meanings are considered. We show that Eucken is not a representative of authoritarian liberalism in either sense of the term. While Eucken and Schmitt offer similar descriptions of the entanglement of state and economy in Weimar Germany, their proposed solutions are rather different. With regard to the second meaning, we argue that Eucken's critique of democracy refers to two universally recognized problems of democratic decision making, namely interest group influence and the tyranny of the majority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the Eurozone crisis, a battle of ideas emerged over whether ordoliberalism is part of the cause or the solution of economic problems in Europe. While German ordoliberals argued that their policy proposals were largely ignored before, during and after the crisis, critics saw too much ordoliberal influence, especially in form of austerity policies. We argue that neither view is entirely correct. Instead, we observe that the battle of ideas is largely independent of the countries' actual responses to the Eurozone crisis: pragmatic self-interest on behalf of governments rather than their ideological convictions played a crucial role in political reactions. We explain this dynamic game-theoretically and highlight a number of reasons for the decoupling of the political-pragmatic debate from the ideological-academic discourse. In addition, we argue that ordoliberals themselves contributed to the ideological misuse of their own program: the ordoliberal Freiburg School ceased to be an active research program and instead grew to resemble a tradition which all too often disregarded the international academic discourse, in particular in macroeconomics. As a result, ordoliberal thinking was abused by its proponents and critics alike to emphasize their preconceived Weltanschauung (worldview). We end our paper with some thoughts on how a contemporary ordoliberalism can be constructively used to react to some of the challenges of the ongoing Eurozone crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a closer look at how the relation between liberalism and democracy has been addressed by different strands of the liberal tradition. Its purpose is to argue in support of two claims. Firstly, the claim that discourse on what the two ideals are about, and how they are related to one another, has been impaired by a failure to pay due attention to the distinction between the question of legitimacy and the question of institutional expediency. Secondly, the claim that, when the noted distinction is taken into account, the two ideals can be shown to complement each other in their outlook at how social and political life should be organized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is offered to the articles within the issue, which honors political scientist Keith T. Poole, on topics, including political science methodology, roll-call voting and polarization.

This paper presents evidence that greater representation encourages electoral participation. I exploit an electoral reform in 2015 Chile that changed the extent to which each district is represented in the national congress, differentially across districts. Using voter participation in the first round of 2017's election, which included votes for president and both chambers of congress, I find that voter participation rose (or fell less) in districts where congressional representation increased. A placebo test using participation in the second round of the presidential election, which did not select the legislative branch, shows no effect of the change in parliamentary representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2019 local election in Hungary accelerated the trend of centralization, marked by a simultaneous reduction in available local funds and an increase in discretionary transfers to local governments. This paper, utilizing a dataset encompassing all over 3000 municipalities from 2015 to 2020, employs fixed-effect estimations and a regression discontinuity design to explore how election outcomes influenced central decisions on intergovernmental transfers. Generally, larger municipalities are more susceptible to political influence, particularly in the allocation of discretionary grants, whereas smaller settlements appear less affected by political shifts. Changes in political alignment triggered a rewarding policy for municipalities that remained or converted to aligned status, resulting in an additional 86.4% and 65.2% of discretionary funds, respectively, relative to those converting to or remaining unaligned. Our research establishes that political influence in intergovernmental transfers has intensified since 2019, offering valuable insights for the upcoming 2024 election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper endogenizes pro-entrepreneurship policies in a model where voters choose the strength of these policies and entrepreneurs generate social returns which benefit the median voter. In the model, incumbent firms who are harmed by the greater competition that this policy promotes can push back in two ways: via corruption and persuasion. Specifically, they can bribe elected politicians to break their campaign promises; and they can allocate some of their rents to corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives that also benefit voters. The model predicts that corruption which weakens pro-entrepreneurship policy can be completely neutralized by a forward-looking median voter—without removing the incentive among incumbent firms to bribe politicians. In this way, endogenizing entrepreneurship policy can destroy any relationship between corruption and entrepreneurship. Corporate social responsibility initiatives modify this prediction, which provides a novel rationale for CSR that appears to be new to the literature as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to evaluate the impact of a policy that targets criminal infiltration in local governments on the provision of local public goods in Italian municipalities. Building on the theoretical framework proposed by Dal Bò (American Political Science Review 100:41–53, 2006), we use a sufficient statistic approach to describe the dynamic behaviour of local public goods when stricter law enforcement weakens criminal pressure groups. Utilizing data on the local public finances of Italian municipalities spanning from 2004 to 2015, our findings reveal that, after the dismissal of infiltrated governments, the targeted municipalities devote a larger share of resources to public goods, with an estimated increase of approximately 3.9 percentage points. Notably, this effect seems to be driven by an increase in investment of approximately 3 percentage points. Overall, our results suggest that policies targeting the problem of criminal infiltration in local governments can improve socioeconomic conditions and the well-being of local communities, by increasing investments in economically and socially relevant public goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After World War II, the quest for rights began to address the interests of particular groups, including minorities, children, women, animals, the environment, and workers. Many groups, however, continued or started to rely on the market, or private collective action, to further their interests. This paper offers a model to explain the choice between market and political action. Benefits achieved through collective action are a club good whose benefits are enjoyed and costs are borne by the group. Rights are a public good which benefits the whole class of people who qualify while its costs are borne only by the fighters, which invites free riding. Therefore, rights are more costly to achieve, but their benefits are higher because they are harder to undo and may facilitate further action; so they are chosen if their benefit/cost ratio is higher than that of collective action. The history of the American labor, black freedom, and women's movements, and their intersections, provides a good fit for the model's predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public choice research has revealed a variety of political dilemmas associated with governance that tend to make good governance unlikely. This paper suggests that the good governments that we observe are likely to have cultural or ethical support–support that solves or ameliorates the dilemmas uncovered by public choice research. It demonstrates that five important impediments to good governance can be ameliorated by internalized ethical dispositions. Although good government is not generated by ethical conduct per se, some forms of conduct regarded as ethical are supportive of good governance and arguably prerequisites to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based primarily on personal conversations with James M. Buchanan, this paper outlines three fundamental aspects of the Italian tradition found in Buchanan's scholarship. The first is the particular emphasis on the role of the state. The second is the analysis of subjective cost. The third is the application of subjective cost to democratic public finance. This paper will focus on the latter two aspects, concentrating on two pioneering works on which Buchanan grounded two of his most important books written during the first part of his long career. The first is Public Principles of Public Debt, which profoundly was influenced by de Viti de Marco, the second is Cost and Choice, wherein along with de Viti de Marco, we find themes echoing Francesco Ferrara. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the political economy of epidemic disease. First, it outlines the incentive and information problems facing policymakers in responding to a new epidemic. Second, it considers the existence of a tradeoff between public health and freedom. Informed by a survey of the history of public health and an analysis of the response to Covid-19, it presents evidence that such a tradeoff can obtain in the short run but that, in the long run, the negative relationship is reversed and the trade-off disappears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I investigate the impact of voter turnout on top marginal tax rates in OECD countries between 1974 and 2013. I find that higher turnout leads to higher taxes for top earners, a result broadly consistent with the median voter theorem. Using novel survey data, I confirm that individuals in all but the wealthiest income bracket prefer higher taxes on the rich more than they prefer greater government spending in the economy. In line with these preferences, I find that turnout has a significantly negative effect on top income shares but no effect on the size of government or on public welfare expenditure. An instrumental variables approach confirms my findings. Overall, the paper is the first of its kind to link turnout to measures of redistribution that affect top earners and to preferences for redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper relies on an incidence of environmental disaster to examine the specific objective of a regulatory agency. Leveraging the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant coal ash spill of 2008 as a natural experiment, I compare the public interest theory of regulation—maximization of net social benefits—with public choice theory, which here is the maximization of net political support. I estimate the effect of the environmental disaster on Clean Water Act monitoring in Tennessee to test one posited objective against the other. I find that regulated facilities proximate to the spill are subject to closer state-administered monitoring after the spill than regulated facilities away from the spill, even though the additional wastewater inspections do not produce positive marginal benefits for controlling coal ash. Additionally, the difference in monitoring soon normalizes to pre-spill levels, consistent with the public's interest in the event. The empirical results supply evidence that the studied regulatory agency maximizes net political support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic interests are assumed to be the leading driver of political preferences, and various empirical studies have examined how economic conditions affect political views and voting behavior. Meanwhile, populism is on the rise in European Union (EU) member countries. Against that backdrop, this paper aims to examine the effect of economic uncertainty on populist voting behavior based on a panel dataset of 24 EU countries from 1980 to 2020. We focus on whether total populist, right-wing populist, and left-wing populist votes are affected by a new indicator of economic uncertainty, namely, the World Uncertainty Index (WUI). Relying on a fixed-effects, bias-corrected least squares dummy variable estimator and instrumental variable estimations, we show that a higher WUI increases total populism and right-wing populist voting behavior. The baseline results remain consistent when dealing with potential issues of endogeneity and reverse causality, addressing omitted variable bias, and excluding outliers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we provide an overview of the influence of Tullock's work on rent-seeking in the area of economics education. After summarizing the basic rent-seeking model in both a domestic and international context, we conduct an analysis of undergraduate and graduate textbooks in public economics. We find a majority of undergraduate texts cover rent-seeking in depth, but two texts provide zero coverage. No graduate textbook surveyed mentions rent-seeking. We conclude by summarizing the economic education literature on rent-seeking, which can be divided into either classroom experiments or popular culture examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the root causes of conflict and terrorism ultimately will allow policymakers to enact measures to reduce violence's associated costs. This special issue on "Strategic and Experimental Approaches to the Study of Conflict and Terrorism" consists of papers that analyze issues related to conflict or terrorism using the tools of applied game theory or experimental economics. This introductory article provides an overview of, and explains the relationships between, the studies included in the special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With participation quorums present in elections and referendums, supporters of the status quo have to decide whether to vote against the proposition or boycott it by abstaining altogether to achieve the same result. This paper examines why one strategy or the other is implemented, using data from recall elections in 376 Peruvian municipalities mandating a 50% participation quorum to validate the removal of the mayor. While instrumental rationality under situations of strategic uncertainty in competitive settings goes far in explaining the incidence of boycotts, a bounded rationality approach whereby actors rely on inferential heuristics through spatial diffusion and past experience produces similarly consistent results. Boycotts are also more likely when voter coordination is easier. Personal traits of the status quo elites, on the other hand, are irrelevant. The paper contributes to the understanding of the quorum paradox warning that measures to increase voter participation, such as the introduction of a participation quorum, may actually depress it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the targeted spending of public resources provide electoral benefits for incumbents? Despite the attention of scholars to that question, the empirical results are mixed thus far. The present paper supplies insights into the electoral benefits of discretionary funding on local elections. I study the consequences of pork-barrel politics in 7355 competitive mayoral elections in Slovakia between 2006 and 2018, finding that more grants from the central government enhance the likelihood of mayors winning reelection. The same advantage applies to mayors whose municipalities receive grants in local election years. The effects of the number of grants obtained as well as the timing of their distribution are, however, moderated by municipal population. More specifically, a larger number of grants and resources obtained near the end of the mayoral term provides electoral benefits only to small town mayors but give no advantage to the mayors of larger urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 allowed governors of the fifty states to designate low-income areas as a "Qualified Opportunity Zone" (QOZ), which entitled the investors in these QOZs to significant tax incentives. As a result, each governor's designation of QOZs provided an opportunity for the governor to introduce investments in low-income communities that would, in principle, increase economic opportunities in these areas. At the same time, each governor's decision also provided an opportunity for the governor to reward political allies, to buy voter support, and to help business interests. Which of these many factors influenced the designation of QOZs? In this paper we estimate the impact of economic and political variables on the governors' decisions to choose which areas among all eligible areas would receive QOZ status and which would not. We find that the QOZ selection process overall seems to have been relatively technocratic, with many of the strongest factors that determine QOZ designation being indicators of economic distress such as higher rates of unemployment, welfare receipt, or lower median income, all of which are consistent with the presumed goals of QOZs. Even so, we also find that political factors are significant in QOZ designation, with Democratic representation being negatively associated with QOZ nomination and with political representation by a local politician of the same party as the governor being positively associated with QOZ nomination. Of some note, we also find that areas with higher college attainment are favored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of China as a major development partner requires a reassessment of traditional donor–recipient dynamics. In addition to adopting new rhetoric like "South–South cooperation" or "Win–Win," China has eschewed classifications and practices of the traditional donors of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee. Yet the "new approach" and willful ignorance may not spare China from encountering traditional development challenges. In this paper, we consider whether Chinese development efforts have disincentivized difficult economic reforms by providing recipient governments with alternative resources for building support. Using an instrumental variable approach with panel data covering 106 countries during the 2000–2014 period, we find that when comparing Chinese development flows to several Western donors, the former's flows inhibit broader economic reform. The findings are robust to alternative specifications, data, instruments, and approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction presents a brief background of the Public Choice Society, its 50th anniversary conference, and the purpose of this symposium. This symposium consists of 13 papers within four of the main pillars of public choice: Virginia political economy, Bloomington political economy, experimental economics, and social choice. These papers pay homage to the Society's first 50 years while demonstrating the breadth and vibrancy of modern public choice scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of having a state religion on fiscal capacity. Our analysis extends the legitimization argument, which postulates that a state religion legitimizes the revenue-raising motives of the state. We then argue that the effect reduces the incentive of the state to invest in fiscal capacity. First, we build a simple theoretical model to highlight our central idea and derive our testable hypothesis. The model shows that in the presence of a legitimization effect, countries with a state religion face weaker incentives to invest in fiscal capacity, as they can raise revenue by exploiting the legitimizing power of the church. Next, we test the hypothesis in a potential outcomes model, which models the selection on observables using both recent and historical data. We show, always following our theoretical model, that countries with a state religion have lower fiscal capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine three forms of regret in relation to the UK's hugely significant referendum on EU membership that was held in June 2016. They are: (i) whether 'leave' voters at the referendum subsequently regretted their choice (in the light of the result), (ii) whether non-voters regretted their decisions to abstain (essentially supporting 'remain') and (iii) whether individuals were more likely to indicate that it is everyone's duty to vote following the referendum. We find evidence in favor of all three types of regret. In particular, leave voters and non-voters were significantly more likely to indicate that they would vote to remain given a chance to do so again; moreover, the probability of an individual stating that it was everyone's duty to vote in a general election increased significantly in 2017 (compared to 2015). The implications of the findings are discussed in the context of the referendum's outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vote buying is a form of political clientelism involving pre-electoral transfers of money or material benefits from candidates to voters. Despite the presence of secret ballots, vote buying remains a pervasive phenomenon during elections in developing countries. While prior literature has focused on how vote buying is enforced by parties and political candidates and which types of voters are most likely targeted, we know much less about the behavioral spillover effects of vote buying on citizens' demand for redistribution and contributions to the provision of public goods. In this paper, we provide evidence on how vote buying causally affects voters' candidate choice, support for redistribution, and public goods provision. Using data from a laboratory experiment in Kenya, we find that vote buying is a double-edged sword for candidates using clientelist strategies: it attracts votes from those who were offered money and accepted it, but it also leads to negative reactions from those who rejected the offer as well as those who were not offered money. In line with its effect on voting behavior, vote buying has negative effects on subjects' evaluations of the vote-buying candidate. Vote buying significantly reduces individuals' stated preferences for more government spending on police and law enforcement—yet, surprisingly, not on other welfare areas such as unemployment benefits or health. We also find that open ballots—but not vote-buying campaigns—reduce individuals' willingness to contribute to public goods provisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the midst of a health crisis, a drug in development and candidate for COVID-19 contagious disease was granted orphan-drug designation (ODD). This decision by the US Food and Drug Administration was immediately denounced as an abuse of the Orphan Drug Act (ODA). This paper outlines how this decision may be considered as the result of a complex case of capture along the regulatory process. Therefore, a case study of the remdesivir episode is conducted, combining the definition of a framework for the analysis of capture and the identification of stylized facts marking the trajectory of a repositioned drug and candidate for COVID-19. In doing so, arguments are put forward to show to what extent this granting of ODD can be described as the result of a series of captures, a case of weak capture however that calls for an amendment of the ODA to preclude drugs for contagious and communicable epidemic diseases from obtaining orphan status in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although party switching is a relatively rare event in most countries, the phenomenon is widespread in Brazil. This paper investigates the effects of party switching on political and economic variables between 2001 and 2012 using a database containing more than 4900 Brazilian municipalities. In particular, given that the conventional literature addresses party switching by legislators, this paper focuses on chief executives, specifically mayors, a subject that has not yet been explored in the literature. In this study, party switching is interpreted as a treatment effect: the treated group comprises municipalities whose mayors changed parties during their terms in office. The control group comprises municipalities with no party switching, but with similar likelihoods of being treated, as defined by propensity score matching (PSM) methods. Our results suggest that mayors belonging to the same party as the state governor or the president are less likely to switch parties. Moreover, switching from a different party to the state governor's party creates the best results for switchers who want to be renominated. Regarding reelection, our panel estimations suggest that the impact of party switching on reelection is positive. Finally, we find no statistically significant effect of party switching on the amounts of transfers received by municipalities from upper government levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite extensive econometric testing, the research literature has been unable to draw firm conclusions regarding the effect of economic globalization on government spending. This paper explores various dimensions of the wide variation in existing estimates of the globalization-spending relationship. By applying meta-analysis and meta-regression methods to a unique data set consisting of 1182 observations from 79 peer-reviewed articles, we find that the evidence rejects theoretical views predicting strong unidirectional effects of economic globalization on government spending. Once we account for publication selection bias, no evidence of a non-zero average empirical effect is found. More importantly, however, the type of government spending matters: while the results are consistent with the view that economic globalization exerts small-to-moderate downward pressure on government spending for social protection and welfare, other spending components are affected less significantly. The meta-regression analysis shows further that several factors influence the globalization-spending estimates reported in the literature, including the choice of the economic globalization indicator, details of the econometric specifications, and publication characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]