Political Capacity And Economic Behavior

Given today’s heightened competition between national economies in the global marketplace, many have come to believe that government intervention is needed in order for a country to maximize its economic well-being. But to what extent can even the most capable government act to attract investment and enhance economic growth without creating or exacerbating conflicts in society—especially when unpopular measures, such as those aimed at controlling inflation and population growth, must be implemented? This timely book by an international team of economists and political scientists tackles that question head on. The contributors draw on theory and empirical data to provide a framework for measuring governments’ ability to gather material resources and mobilize populations. They analyze a variety of policy choices made in the United States and in other nations arond the world during the past fifty years, showing how states can increase their political capacity and thereby reduce economic transaction costs and domestic resistance to government goals.

Given today's heightened competition between national economies in the global marketplace, many have come to believe that government intervention is needed in order for a country to maximize its economic well-being. But to what extent can even the most capable government act to attract investment and enhance economic growth without creating or exacerbating conflicts in society—especially when unpopular measures, such as those aimed at controlling inflation and population growth, must be implemented?This timely book by an international team of economists and political scientists tackles that question head on. The contributors draw on theory and empirical data to provide a framework for measuring governments' ability to gather material resources and mobilize populations. They analyze a variety of policy choices made in the United States and in other nations around the world during the past fifty years, showing how states can increase their political capacity and thereby reduce economic transaction costs and domestic resistance to government goals.

Given today’s heightened competition between national economies in the global marketplace, many have come to believe that government intervention is needed in order for a country to maximize its economic well-being. But to what extent can even the most capable government act to attract investment and enhance economic growth without creating or exacerbating conflicts in society—especially when unpopular measures, such as those aimed at controlling inflation and population growth, must be implemented? This timely book by an international team of economists and political scientists tackles that question head on. The contributors draw on theory and empirical data to provide a framework for measuring governments’ ability to gather material resources and mobilize populations. They analyze a variety of policy choices made in the United States and in other nations arond the world during the past fifty years, showing how states can increase their political capacity and thereby reduce economic transaction costs and domestic resistance to government goals.

In recent years the understanding of the cognitive foundations of economic behavior has become increasingly important. This volume contains contributions from such leading scholars as Adam Brandenburger, Michael Bacharach and Patrick Suppes. It will be of great interest to academics and researchers involved in the field of economics and psychology as well as those interested in political economy more generally.

This PhD dissertation consists of four self-contained chapters in the field of Political Development Economics. They are all empirical projects studying decision-making under heterogeneous conditions. In the first chapter, I investigate the causal link between economic expectations and voting in an independence referendum, and document that the effect is contingent upon voters' identity. In the second chapter we map state capacity at the subnational level in Africa and show that the risk of oil induced conflicts depends on levels of local state capacity. The third chapter focuses on the link between food scarcity and cooperative investments. Exploiting the harvest as an exogenous shock to food supply in rural Tanzania, we document a causal role of food scarcity in suppressing socially efficient cooperation. The fourth and final chapter studies moral decision making in Greenland. We develop a measure of parochial honesty - the propensity to behave honestly toward the ingroup but not toward the outgroup - and show that market exposure predicts the degree of group differentiation.

project was the development and application of a model of central and local government behavior. It was carried out in collaboration with the Dutch Department of Home Affairs, during the period September 1985 - April 1987. The project's aim was the study of the determinants of local government decisionmaking in the Netherlands and the implications of so-called intergovernmental relations for local government behavior. During that project I was assisted by Sander Helder and Marc Tigche1aar. The results of that project appeared in a book, co-authored by Frans van Winden, entitled Gemeentefinancien en Gedecentra1iseerde. Bes1uitvorming(Loca1 Public Finance and Decentralized Decisionmaking). This book is, for the time being, the end product of my research on government behavior. Much more research is needed on the study of government behavior and the application of models which, from an economic point of view, focus on the implications of the interaction between economics and politics. The knowledge of this process is not only interesting as such, but also from a practical point of view. without a good positive analysis of the behavior of the government in modern industrialized economies it is neither possible to see through its operations nor to use its policies as an effective instrument in the pursuit of economic targets.

The need for careful research on trade policy is particularly acute, and this volume empirically addresses these and many other important issues. The contributors offer studies which integrate the institutional details of current trade policy with creative economic analyses. Marked by a shift from a traditional reliance on simulation models, these papers take their inspiration from recent changes in the assumptions traditionally underlying research in international trade theory. No longer are government policies viewed as being somehow "given" to the researcher; in part 1, "Analyses with a Political Economy Perspective," four papers treat such policies as endogenous and explicable in terms of political economy. Neither are product and factor markets seen as perfectly competitive; instead, the three papers in part 2, "Trade Policy Effects under Imperfectly Competitive Market Conditions," assume that firms consider the actions of other companies when formulating their decisions. In part 3, "A New Measure of Trade Restrictiveness and Estimates of Trade Policy Effects with CGE Models," the first essay explores the quantitative restrictions on cheese to develop and implement a new model of restrictive trade. Two final contributions address problems for which simulation modeling is especially useful. The first considers the effectiveness of an import surcharge in reducing the U.S. trade deficit and the second treats the welfare effects of liberalization in South Korea where increasing returns to scale are significant These innovative studies focus on economic behavior that will provide valuable insights for policymakers, academic economists, and students.

This handbook provides a comprehensive and critical overview of the gamut of contemporary issues around health and healthcare from a political economy perspective. Its contributions present a unique challenge to prevailing economic accounts of health and healthcare, which narrowly focus on individual behaviour and market processes. Instead, the capacity of the human body to reach its full potential and the ability of society to prevent disease and cure illness are demonstrated to be shaped by a broader array of political economic processes. The material conditions in which societies produce, distribute, exchange, consume, and reproduce – and the operation of power relations therein – influence all elements of human health: from food consumption and workplace safety, to inequality, healthcare and housing, and even the biophysical conditions in which humans live. This volume explores these concerns across five sections. First, it introduces and critically engages with a variety of established and cutting-edge theoretical perspectives in political economy to conceptualise health and healthcare – from neoclassical and behavioural economics, to Marxist and feminist approaches. The next two sections extend these insights to evaluate the neoliberalisation of health and healthcare over the past 40 years, highlighting their individualisation and commodification by the capitalist state and powerful corporations. The fourth section examines the diverse manifestation of these dynamics across a range of geographical contexts. The volume concludes with a section devoted to outlining more progressive health and healthcare arrangements, which transcend the limitations of both neoliberalism and capitalism. This volume will be an indispensable reference work for students and scholars of political economy, health policy and politics, health economics, health geography, the sociology of health, and other health-related disciplines. Chapters 1 & 8 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [CC BY NC ND] 4.0 license.