Single‐Party Rule,Public Spending,and Political Rents: Evidence from Finnish Municipalities*

In this paper, I investigate the differences in public spending and extraction of political rents between single‐party and coalition governments. Common pool theories predict that coalitions tend to spend more and extract more rents than single‐party governments. Using data from Finnish municipalities for the years 1997–2012 and a regression discontinuity design approach tailored for proportional elections, I provide causal evidence consistent with the theoretical predictions.     

城市房屋参考租金测定与空间分布——以广州为例

房屋参考租金是指在城市规划区范围内,由房地产管理部门对现状利用条件下不同区片、路段等均质地域的房屋,按照商业、居住、写字楼、工业等用途,分别评估测定并定期发布的市场平均租金.它是地方政府租金课税的重要依据.文章探讨了房屋参考租金测定的技术路线与方法,并利用2007年广州市房屋参考租金成果,分析了房屋参考租金的空间分布规律.     

A political economy perspective of direct democracy in ancient Athens

Using a political economy framework the paper argues that in ancient Athens direct democracy, absence of political parties and appointment to office by lot were inextricably linked. Direct rather than representative democracy was in the interest of the constitutional framer at the time of the transition to democracy. Deciding directly each policy issue under majority rule diminished the intermediation function of political parties, a tendency possibly reinforced by an integrative ideology of defending the polis. In the absence of political parties to fight elections and distribute rents from office, appointment of office-holders by lot randomized their selection, a process which yielded an accurate representation of individual preferences, and distributed rents irrespective of the private wealth of individual citizens.     

An Hedonic Analysis of the Rental Office Market in the Tokyo Central Business District: 1985–1994 Fiscal Years

We study the rental office market in the Tokyo central business district by estimating hedonic equations for the office rent for 1985–94 fiscal years. This period includes the "Bubble" of asset prices, followed by its deflation. We find that the characteristics related to transportational conveniences are less effective in explaining office rents than the characteristics related to the agglomeration of offices and the amenity characteristics of the office buildings themselves. Using a skewed error-term specification, we show that the discount in rental transactions is not irrelevant. The hedonic office rent indices and possible policy implications are also presented.
JEL Classification Numbers: L85, R32.     

The political economy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership: a ‘21st Century’ trade agreement?

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was the first of the ‘Mega-FTAs’ to be signed. Had it been ratified, it would have created the world’s largest preferential trade area. The negotiators of the TPP aspired to create ‘a next-generation transformative agreement’ that would address a new trade agenda focused on regulatory coherence and business facilitation. The expectation was that this agenda would generate a 21st Century trade politics that would be less contentious, at least among business actors, than traditional negotiations on market access. Studies of another Mega-FTA under negotiation, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that has a similar agenda found unified business support for the agreement domestically and the emergence of transnational business coalitions in support of the agreement. Recent theorising on trade politics suggests, however, that global value chains (GVCs) that involve vertical intra-industry trade introduce ‘traditional’ distributional issues that will divide business interests domestically – and, in the case of GVCs organised on different geographical bases, internationally as well. This cleavage was evident in the TPP negotiations, unlike those for TTIP, as were other divisions among business – both domestically and across countries – over the sharing of existing rents and of new rents generated by regulatory harmonisation.     

Tax contracts and elections

In this paper we examine the impact of tax contracts as a novel institution on elections, policies, and welfare. We consider a political game in which three parties compete to form the government and voters may behave strategically. Parties have policy preferences about the level of public-good provision and benefit from perks when in office. A government raises taxes for both purposes. We show that tax contracts yield moderate policies and lead to lower perks by avoiding the formation of grand coalitions in order to win government. Moreover, in polarized societies they unambiguously improve the welfare of the median voter.     

在京单位周转住房成本租金核定办法探讨

国管局、中直管理局根据中央国家机关办公地点分布情况,在职工住宅小区等地建设或改建一批周转住房,向新录用等符合条件的职工出租。周转住房以满足职工基本住房需要为原则,租住年限原则上不得超过5年,租金按周转住房的开发建设、维修及管理成本确定。     

Enfranchisement from a political perspective

This paper presents an alternative theoretical perspective on democratization. Various models of democratization have been proposed in the literature, like enfranchisement in response to threats of revolution, threats of war, and split of interests among elites. However, there seems to be instances of democratization that do not follow any of these patterns. For one, these theories rely on redistributive aspects of franchise extension. My model captures democratization arising out of an evenly-balanced partisan competition between political parties, large rents from office and a part of the enfranchised benefiting from extension of franchise. Hence I can explain instances of suffrage extension with little or no redistributive repercussions like women’s suffrage. My model also fits the democratization experiences of several countries like Sweden, Chile, and Italy.     

Political incentives for rent creation

Rent-seeking is often depicted as a contest in which rent-seekers compete for a prize—the rent. In the process of rent-seeking, much or perhaps all of the rent is dissipated through the costs the contestants incur to compete. Rent dissipation is inconsistent with the incentives of both the rent-seekers and those who create the rents. Policymakers have an incentive to create rents only if they gain from the process, and their gain comes from sharing any surplus that goes to those who obtain the rents. A surplus can be created through a barrier to entry into rent-seeking. When institutions that generate barriers to entry into rent-seeking break down, rent-seeking competitions can occur in which all rents are dissipated, but this should be a special case rather than the general rule in rent-seeking.     

Toward Farsightedly Stable International Environmental Agreements

The stability of International Environmental Agreements (IEA) is analyzed by using game theory. The integrated assessment model FUND provides the cost-benefit payoff functions of pollution abatement for sixteen different world regions. The farsighted stability concept of Chwe (1994) is used and solved by combinatorial algorithms. Farsighted stability assumes perfect foresight of the players and predicts which coalitions can be formed when players are farsighted. All farsightedly stable coalitions are found, and their improvement to environment and welfare is considerable. The farsightedly stable coalitions are refined further to preferred farsightedly stable coalitions, which are coalitions where the majority of coalition members reach higher profits in comparison with any other farsightedly stable coalitions. Farsightedly stable coalitions contribute more to the improvement of environment and welfare in comparison to D'Aspremont et al.'s (1983) stable ones. Considering multiple farsighted stable coalitions, participation in coalitions for environmental protection is significantly increased, which is an optimistic result of our game theoretical model.     

An assessment of the influence of bioenergy and marketed land amenity values on land uses in the Midwestern US

There is substantial concern that bioenergy policies could swamp other considerations, such as environmental values, and lead to large-scale conversions of land from forest to crops. This study examines how bioenergy and marketed environmental rents for forestland potentially influence land use in the Midwestern US. We hypothesize that current land uses reflect market values for environmental benefits of forestland, so that the marketed component of the environmental value of land can be captured as the difference between Census land values and value of land as a timber asset. We use a multinomial logit model to estimate the land use shares of forests, crops and urban in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The results show that marketed environmental rents increase forestland relative to cropland. To examine the effects of biofuels on land use, we conduct policy analysis by altering future land rents. Our baseline scenario projects that urban development uses mostly cropland, but with higher crop rents resulting from increased demand for bioenergy, there will be significant losses of forestland to urban and cropland. On the other hand, if marketed environmental rents grow while crop rents are maintained at their baseline value, urban growth will occur, primarily at the expense of cropland.     

Corruption and natural resource rents: evidence from quantile regression

This study examines the impacts of oil rents on corruption for 157 countries. While existing studies have primarily focused on average effects, we employ quantile regression to estimate the effects of natural resource abundance for different corruption levels. We consider the effects of natural resource rents, mainly oil rents and then compare them with those of total and non-oil natural resources rents. The estimation results show that, generally, more oil rents increase corruption. Specifically, impacts are larger in countries with an intermediate level of corruption and smaller in highly corrupt countries. While total resource rents increase corruption significantly, non-oil resource rents do not. This may be due to non-oil resource rent management (mainly inland) being more subject to public scrutiny. Non-oil natural resources are concentrated in the less-developed sub-Saharan African countries, where corruption is prevalent; therefore, the impacts of natural resource rents are unremarkable.     

地域大事件营销效应的城市增长机器分析——以南京奥体新城为例

城市增长机器是全球化激烈竞争环境中城市政府与资本力量结合的一种增长联盟,在转型期的中国城市增长中广泛存在。文章以地域营销大事件作为切入点,具体以南京奥体新城为实证,对城市增长联盟的形成、博弈与解体进行了研究。揭示了转型期中国城市政府的高度企业化倾,以及城市增长机器产生、运作的机制。指出要建立更为稳定、广泛的城市城市增长联盟,实现从“增长型政府”向“发展型政府”治理模式的根本转变。     

Rents from power for a dissident elite and mass mobilization

Popular uprisings in autocracies seldom lead to democratic regimes. We propose a model that helps explain how rents from power encourage popular revolts. We study why citizens would follow a dissident group seeking regime change, if rents from change accrue only to the group. Our model predicts that higher rents may increase the incidence of public mobilization because rents facilitate coordination. The results suggest that cohesive dissident groups may spur seemingly spontaneous mass mobilizations, even when the mass public know that the dissident group is driven by greed rather than a genuine desire to halt incumbent’s rent‐seeking activities.     

The weak core of simple games with ordinal preferences: implementation in Nash equilibrium

In a simple game, coalitions belonging to a given class are “absolutely powerful” while others have no power. We attempt to make this distinction operational. Toward this end, we propose two axioms on social choice correspondences, Strong Non-Discrimination and Exclusion. Strong Non-Discrimination describes circumstances under which certain coalitions, the losing coalitions, have no influence over social choice. Exclusion requires that there are situations in which certain coalitions, the winning coalitions, can exercise their power. We show that the weak core correspondence is the minimal correspondence satisfying Maskin Monotonicity and Strong Non-Discrimination. We also show that the weak core is the unique correspondence satisfying Nash implementability, Strong Non-Discrimination, and Exclusion.     

Equilibrium binding agreements: a comment

To construct their Equilibrium Binding Agreements, Ray and Vohra (J. Econ. Theory, 73 (1997) 30-78) define a concept of an equilibrium between coalitions and prove its existence for any coalition structure. We show that this result crucially depends on the quasi-concavity of the utility functions, which in turn depends on the type of mixed strategies used by the coalitions. When coalitions use uncorrelated mixed strategies utility functions may not be quasi-concave and an equilibrium may not exist. However, if coalitions use correlated strategies, an equilibrium always exist.     

Lobbying and Welfare in a Representative Democracy

This paper studies the impact of lobbying on political competition and policy outcomes in a framework which integrates the citizen–candidate model of representative democracy with the menu-auction model of lobbying. Positive and normative issues are analysed. On the positive side, lobbying need have little or no effect on policy outcomes because voters can restrict the influence of lobbyists by supporting candidates with offsetting policy preferences. On the normative side, coordination failure among lobbyists can result in Pareto inefficient policy choices. In addition, by creating rents to holding office, lobbying can lead to "excessive" entry into electoral competition.     

机遇管理与企业竞争优势

本文从企业成长过程中所面临的问题出发,运用机遇管理理论分析了企业辨识、评价、利用和营造机遇的运行机制,阐释了企业发展过程中机遇管理的重要性和必然性。从经济学的视角来看,企业的竞争优势来源于经济租金,经济租金可以分为基于低成本和差异化的张伯伦租金、基于资源和能力的李嘉图租金、基于知识和创新的熊彼特租金。本文分析了企业机遇管理在企业获取经济租金、建立竞争优势中的作用,分析了机遇管理与低成本和差异化、资源和能力、知识和创新之间的关系。本文认为,机遇管理有利于获得与维持企业租金：企业通过机遇管理有助于实现低成本和差异化,获取张伯伦租金;有助于企业获得稀缺资源,提高能力,获取李嘉图租金;有助于企业积累知识,促进创新,获取熊彼特租金。本文从经济学的角度分析了企业竞争优势的来源,论证了企业租金的来源正是企业竞争优势的来源,探索了企业通过机遇管理建立竞争优势的新方法、新途径。     

The economic impact of reducing on-base naval housing

This article develops a methodology for estimating the impact on rents and home prices from a hypothetical reduction of on-base naval housing from 56 naval bases in the United States. Based on data from the Center for Naval Analyses and the U.S. Census of Housing, and response coefficients from housing economics literature, illustrative estimates are presented of the short-run and long-run and long-run impact of reducing naval housing.
Key factors determining the increase in rents and home prices include (1) the increase in demand for housing in the private sector resulting from the reduction of on-base naval housing, (2) the short-run and long-run elasticities of supply of private sector housing with respect to housing prices, and (3) the elasticity of demand to live in a defined housing area with respect to housing prices.
We find that the effects on rents and home prices are in most cases small in the short run and negligible in the long run. The median first-year rent increase in the 53 counties is estimated to be 0.90%, with only 9 of the counties still expected to experience rent increases of as much as 4%. In the long run, the median rent increase is estimated to be only 0.10%. Because the purchase of a home is a long-term investment, we find that the impact on home prices is negligible, similar to the long-run impact on rents.