[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cor/louvco/2002029.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Yardstick competition and political agency problems

Author

Listed:
  • BELLEFLAMME, Paul
  • HINDRIKS, Jean
Abstract
This paper analyzes the role of yardstick competition for improving political decisions. We examine how performance comparisons across jurisdictions affect the agency problem resulting from uncertainty about politicians (adverse selection) and their policies (moral hazard). We study two forms of inefficiency: the provision of wasteful project and the failure to provide useful project .We find a general neutrality result: yardstick competition does not affect the likelihood of fully efficient equilibria for any correlation (with a discontinuity at perfect correlation). We also find that yardstick competition has no effect on the likelihood of inefficient equilibria in which politicians refrain from implementing valuable projects. However, performance comparisons makes it less likely to have an equilibrium where bad politicians in both jurisdictions use wasteful projects as inefficient transfer forms.

Suggested Citation

  • BELLEFLAMME, Paul & HINDRIKS, Jean, 2002. "Yardstick competition and political agency problems," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2002029, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
  • Handle: RePEc:cor:louvco:2002029
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://sites.uclouvain.be/core/publications/coredp/coredp2002.html
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Besley, Timothy & Case, Anne, 1995. "Incumbent Behavior: Vote-Seeking, Tax-Setting, and Yardstick Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 25-45, March.
    2. Andrei Shleifer, 1985. "A Theory of Yardstick Competition," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(3), pages 319-327, Autumn.
    3. Alesina, Alberto & Baqir, Reza & Easterly, William, 2000. "Redistributive Public Employment," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 219-241, September.
    4. Coate, Stephen & Morris, Stephen, 1995. "On the Form of Transfers in Special Interests," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(6), pages 1210-1235, December.
    5. Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "Moral Hazard in Teams," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 324-340, Autumn.
    6. Brennan,Geoffrey & Buchanan,James M., 2006. "The Power to Tax," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521027922, September.
    7. John Ferejohn, 1986. "Incumbent performance and electoral control," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 5-25, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul Belleflamme & Jean Hindriks, 2005. "Yardstick competition and political agency problems," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 24(1), pages 155-169, September.
    2. Besley, Timothy & Smart, Michael, 2007. "Fiscal restraints and voter welfare," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(3-4), pages 755-773, April.
    3. Simonovits, Gábor, 2010. "A gazdasági integráció hatása a kormányzati elszámoltathatóságra [The effect of economic integration on government accountability]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(11), pages 980-993.
    4. Pierre Salmon, 2013. "Horizontal competition in multilevel governmental settings," Working Papers hal-00830876, HAL.
    5. Timothy Besley & Anne Case, 2003. "Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 7-73, March.
    6. Johannes Rincke, 2005. "Yardstick Competition and Policy Innovation," Public Economics 0511010, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Martin Bodenstein & Heinrich Ursprung, 2005. "Political yardstick competition, economic integration, and constitutional choice in a federation:," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 124(3), pages 329-352, September.
    8. Thierry Madiès & Sonia Paty & Yvon Rocaboy, 2005. "Externalités fiscales horizontales et verticales. Où en est la théorie du fédéralisme financier ?," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 115(1), pages 17-63.
    9. Lars P. Feld & Jean-Michel Josselin & Yvon Rocaboy, 2002. "Le mimétisme fiscal : une application aux Régions françaises," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 156(5), pages 43-49.
    10. Angelino Viceisza, 2007. "An experimental inquiry into the effect of yardstick competition on corruption," Experimental Economics Center Working Paper Series 2007-09, Experimental Economics Center, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    11. Vukovic, Vuk, 2011. "Political agency model of persistent electoral success with endogenous rents," MPRA Paper 39085, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 25 Jan 2012.
    12. Ngo Van Long & Bodhisattva Sengupta, 2008. "Yardstick Competition, Corruption, and Electoral Incentives," CESifo Working Paper Series 2345, CESifo.
    13. Núria Bosch & Albert Solé-Ollé, 2007. "Yardstick competition and the political costs of raising taxes: An empirical analysis of Spanish municipalities," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 14(1), pages 71-92, February.
    14. Timothy Besley & Stephen Coate, 1997. "An Economic Model of Representative Democracy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 85-114.
    15. Jennings, Colin, 2011. "The good, the bad and the populist: A model of political agency with emotional voters," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 611-624.
    16. Amegashie, J. Atsu & Ouattara, Bazoumanna & Strobl, Eric, 2007. "Moral Hazard and the Composition of Transfers: Theory with an Application to Foreign Aid," MPRA Paper 3158, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 06 May 2007.
    17. Konishi, Hideki, 2006. "Spending cuts or tax increases? The composition of fiscal adjustments as a signal," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(6), pages 1441-1469, August.
    18. Didier Laussel & Ngo Van Long, 2020. "Tying the politicians’ hands: The optimal limits to representative democracy," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 22(1), pages 25-48, February.
    19. Eva Mörk & Mattias Nordin, 2020. "Voting, taxes, and heterogeneous preferences: Evidence from Swedish local elections," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 356-380, November.
    20. Shi, Xiangyu & Xi, Tianyang, 2018. "Race to safety: Political competition, neighborhood effects, and coal mine deaths in China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 79-95.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    electoral accountability; Yardstick competition;

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cor:louvco:2002029. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alain GILLIS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/coreebe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.