Suchergebnisse

This paper focuses on the problem of information transmission between the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, with communication modeled as cheap talk. I posit that the Fund and the Bank have strategically relevant and diverse expertise whose proper combination might provide a richer consideration and resolution of strategic issues. Although transparent sharing of all available information is in the best interest of the Fund's and the Bank's stakeholders, competitive pressures might hinder such a process, introducing biases into the two institutions' preferences, and distortions into the communication. According to intuition, a concern for conformity in their actions might mitigate the negative effects of competition. However, truthful communication will never be achieved and strategic uncertainty will persist as an important source of loss, even when both institutions agree on the importance of coordinating their actions.

This paper analyses MEPs' voting behaviour on all regulations and directives forming the Six-Pack and the Two-Pack together with the key vote required to establish the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Whereas scholarly work has traditionally showed MEPs voting behaviour to be primarily driven by ideology (more specifically, by the MEP's party group affiliation), we expect to find MEPs' national origins to play a counterbalancing role and – at least partially – weaken intra-party position on key economic governance matters, where a conflict of interest might exist between creditor and debtor member countries. Findings confirm that national interests and country-level economic variables can predict MEPs' votes in a considerable number of cases, opening new avenues for future research on territorial cleavages in the European Parliament.

Regression results show that more unequal societies tend to spend comparatively more on higher levels of education. In a two-period model with heterogeneous agents, this paper investigates the political determinants of this bias. In the first period, public education is financed by the incumbent government by issuing bonds. Investments in basic and higher education have conflicting effects on future labour income distribution and net returns to these investments depend on the tax and transfers system being selected in the following period through the democratic process. Our idea is that public investment in basic education, by decreasing future labour income inequality, may induce future policy-makers to redistribute resources through financial rents taxation, thus making unfeasible the issuing of debt to finance basic education. This will be the more probable the greater wealth inequality is. [Copyright Elsevier B.V.]

"Regression results show that more unequal societies tend to spend comparatively more on higher levels of education. In a two-period model with heterogeneous agents, this paper investigates the political determinants of this bias. In the first period, public education is financed by the incumbent government by issuing bonds. Investments in basic and higher education have conflicting effects on future labour income distribution and net returns to these investments depend on the tax and transfers system being selected in the following period through the democratic process. Our idea is that public investment in basic education, by decreasing future labour income inequality, may induce future policy-makers to redistribute resources through financial rents taxation, thus making unfeasible the issuing of debt to finance basic education. This will be the more probable the greater wealth inequality is." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))