IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/par/dipeco/2006-ep13.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Electoral Competition and Incentives to Local Public Good Provision

Author

Listed:
  • M. Magnani

Abstract

Local public good provision from different government levels is subject to many bias coming from the political process; incentives indeed, vary with the size of the beneficiaries’ set and costs may affect the results of political competition by reducing total resources available for redistribution. Present work represents a first attempt to look at these issues together; indeed, it considers the situation where politicians have a finite budget to use both for redistributive policies and for the provision of a public good that affects the utility of a fraction of the electorate. In this setting it is not enough that benefits balance costs, in order for the public good to be implemented; the required level of efficiency moreover, is influenced by benefits concentration. If those interested in the public good are less than half of the electorate, concentration increases the efficiency threshold; on the contrary if they amount for more, benefits concentration decreases the required level of efficiency. Classification-JEL: D72, H41

Suggested Citation

  • M. Magnani, 2006. "Electoral Competition and Incentives to Local Public Good Provision," Economics Department Working Papers 2006-EP13, Department of Economics, Parma University (Italy).
    • Handle: RePEc:par:dipeco:2006-ep13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://swrwebeco.econ.unipr.it/RePEc/pdf/I_2006-13.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Myerson, Roger B., 1993. "Incentives to Cultivate Favored Minorities Under Alternative Electoral Systems," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(4), pages 856-869, December.
    2. Baye, Michael R & Kovenock, Dan & de Vries, Casper G, 1993. "Rigging the Lobbying Process: An Application of the All-Pay Auction," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 289-294, March.
    3. Ellingsen, Tore, 1991. "Strategic Buyers and the Social Cost of Monopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(3), pages 648-657, June.
    4. Bertoletti, Paolo, 2006. "On the reserve price in all-pay auctions with complete information and lobbying games," MPRA Paper 1083, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Besley, Timothy & Coate, Stephen, 2003. "Centralized versus decentralized provision of local public goods: a political economy approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(12), pages 2611-2637, December.
    6. Nicolas Sahuguet & Nicola Persico, 2006. "Campaign spending regulation in a model of redistributive politics," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 28(1), pages 95-124, May.
    7. Weingast, Barry R & Shepsle, Kenneth A & Johnsen, Christopher, 1981. "The Political Economy of Benefits and Costs: A Neoclassical Approach to Distributive Politics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(4), pages 642-664, August.
    8. Alos-Ferrer, C., 1998. "Individual Randomness in Economic Models with a Continuum Agents," Papers 9807, Washington St. Louis - School of Business and Political Economy.
    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. Boyer, Pierre C. & Konrad, Kai A. & Roberson, Brian, 2017. "Targeted campaign competition, loyal voters, and supermajorities," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 49-62.
    2. Johannes Münster, 2007. "Contests with investment," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(8), pages 849-862.
    3. Konrad, Kai Andreas & Kovenock, Daniel J., 2005. "Equilibrium and efficiency in the tug-of-war [Gleichgewicht und Effizienz im "Tug of War"]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Processes and Governance SP II 2005-14, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    4. Matthew D. Mitchell, 2019. "Uncontestable favoritism," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 167-190, October.
    5. Münster, Johannes, 2006. "Contests with Investment," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 120, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    6. Münster, Johannes, 2006. "Contests with investment [Wettkämpfe mit Investitionen]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Processes and Governance SP II 2006-09, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    7. Gil S. Epstein & Ira N Gang, 2006. "Decentralizing Aid with Interested Parties," Departmental Working Papers 200629, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    8. Subhasish Chowdhury & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2013. "An experimental investigation of Colonel Blotto games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(3), pages 833-861, April.
    9. Kyung Hwan Baik, 2007. "Equilibrium Contingent Compensation in Contests with Delegation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 73(4), pages 986-1002, April.
    10. Pradeep Dubey & Siddhartha Sahi, 2016. "Optimal Prizes," Department of Economics Working Papers 16-03, Stony Brook University, Department of Economics.
    11. Kyung Hwan Baik & Jong Hwa Lee, 2013. "Endogenous Timing In Contests With Delegation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(4), pages 2044-2055, October.
    12. Florian Gauer & Christoph Kuzmics, 2020. "Cognitive Empathy In Conflict Situations," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1659-1678, November.
    13. Jan K. Brueckner & Steven G. Craig & Kangoh Lee, 2021. "Regionalism Meets Samuelson: Local Production of a National Public Good," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 88(349), pages 1-31, January.
    14. Nadav Amir, 2015. "Uniqueness of optimal strategies in captain lotto games," Discussion Paper Series dp687, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    15. Kovenock, Dan & Roberson, Brian, 2011. "Non-partisan ‘get-out-the-vote’ efforts and policy outcomes," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 728-739.
    16. Brian Knight, 2008. "Legislative Representation, Bargaining Power and The Distribution of Federal Funds: Evidence From The Us Congress," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(532), pages 1785-1803, October.
    17. Baik, Kyung Hwan, 1998. "Difference-form contest success functions and effort levels in contests," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 685-701, November.
    18. Pradeep Dubey & Siddhartha Sahi, 2009. "The Allocation of a Prize," Department of Economics Working Papers 09-01, Stony Brook University, Department of Economics.
    19. Konrad, Kai A. & Kovenock, Dan, 2009. "Multi-battle contests," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 256-274, May.
    20. Baskaran, Thushyanthan & Lopes da Fonseca, Mariana, 2021. "Appointed public officials and local favoritism: Evidence from the German states," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    social security; turnover on the labor market; political equilibria; employment protection; retirement age;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:par:dipeco:2006-ep13. 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: Andrea Lasagni (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feparit.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.