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Modern societies are characterized by competing organizations that rely predominantly on incentive schemes to align the behavior of their members with the organizations' objectives. This study contributes to explaining why in so many cases incentive schemes have gradually crowded out cooperation as an organization device. Our explanation does not draw on free-riding, the obvious Achilles' heel of cooperation, but relies completely on fundamental group contest mechanisms. By investigating a canonical rent seeking model and adopting an evolutionary perspective, the analysis identifies shortcomings in previous results, sets the record straight, and explains why the process of incentivizing organizations is protracted. Adapted from the source document.

Standard spatial models of political competition give rise to equilibria in which the competing political parties or candidates converge to a common position. In this paper I show how political polarization can be generated in models that focus on the nexus between pre-election interest group lobbying and electoral competition.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate environmental policy making from a positive point of view. Unlike traditional normative economic policy analyis, this paper is thus not concerned with advancing policy recommendations for the benefit of the policy makers. Jts objective is rather to explain why environmental policy is conducted in the manner actually observed. In particular 1 will address the following two crucial questions: Firstly, why is the level of environmental protection not higher considering the extent of pollution, and, secondly, why do governments tend to employ inefficient Instruments if and when they attempt to deal with environmental problems at all. Before proposing answers to these two questions in sections 6 and 7, 1 briefly discuss the causes of environmental pollution (section 1). investigate the conditions under which state intervention in the economy is really warranted (section 2) and give a summary of the available environmental policy instruments (section 3). Section 4 then presents the basic structure of the political-economic approach and section 5 reviews the main types of models which are employed in endogenous policy theory to portray the political process. In the concluding section 8 a topical issue is addressed: I attempt to shed some light on the relationship between environmental concerns and international trade.

The early literature on rent seeking presumed that total expenditures in the rent‐seeking process would equal the value of a contested prize. Subsequent analysis has shown, however, that a number of circumstances give rise to underdissipation of the contested rent—imperfectly discriminating contests, risk‐aversion, or where individuals' valuations of the prize are not identical. This paper shows how underdissipation is associated with the public‐good character of contested rents. In particular, total rent dissipation is demonstrated to be less than the average stake of the individual contenders. In addition to assessing rent dissipation in contests for public‐good allocations, the paper also endogenizes the value of the prize by placing the rent‐seeking contest in a setting of candidate competition.

EXPLAINING VOTING BEHAVIOUR OR EVEN FORECASTING VOTE SHARES IN GENERAL ELECTIONS HAS ALWAYS BEEN A MAJOR CONCERN OF POLITICAL SCIENTISTS. AT PRESENT, THERE ARE BASICALLY TWO DISTINCT BODIES OF LITERATURE ABOUT THIS SUBJECT: THE SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND THE ECONOMIC THEORY. THE SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY WAS DEVELOPED DURING WORLD WAR II AND IS GENERALLY ACCEPTED TODAY. LAZARSFELD ET AL. MAY BE REGARDED AS THE PIONEERING WORK IN THIS AREA. THE ECONOMIC THEORY, ON THE OTHER HAND, HAS MORE RECENT ORIGINS. EVEN THOUGH HOTELLING AND SCHUMPETER ALREADY APPLIED ECONOMIC REASONING TO POLITICAL PROBLEMS, THE FOUNDATION OF THE ECONOMIC THEORY OF POLITICS (PUBLIC CHOICE) IS USUALLY CREDITED TO DOWNS. THE SEMINAL EMPIRICAL STUDIES WITHIN THE ECONOMIC THEORY OF VOTING BEHAVIOUR ARE GOODHART AND BHANSALI, MUELLER AND KRAMER. THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS PAPER IS TO REVIEW AND COMPARE THESE TWO THEORIES IN THE LIGHT OF THE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE WHICH CAN BE OBTAINED FROM THE NEW ZEALAND CONTEXT. SINCE THE SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY IS WELL KNOWN AS FAR AS POLITICAL SCIENTISTS ARE CONCERNED, THE ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE IS STRESSED. THE PAPER IS ORGANIZED AS FOLLOWS. SECTION 1 SETS THE STAGE BY BRIEFLY SUMMARISING THE CONTROVERSY WHICH HAS BEEN CARRIED ON IN THIS JOURNAL, SURROUNDING AN EMPIRICAL VOTE FUNCTION FOR NEW ZEALAND. IN SECTION 2 THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH WHICH IS SPECIFIC TO ECONOMIC REASONING IS PRESENTED AND COMPARED WITH THE SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH. THE APPLICATION OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL AND ECONOMIC APPROACHPY: 1984

This article empirically investigates the effects of macroeconomic variables on the popularity of the New Zealand government by testing various popularity functions for the period 1970-1981. The results unambiguously show that the existence of this important politico-economic relationship cannot be doubted. In particular, the empirical results suggest that New Zealand voters are (1) forward-looking rather than backward-looking, (2) capable of comparing the actual macroeconomic condition with some notion of a variable "normal" performance, and (3) well aware of the openness of their economy.