IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ulb/ulbeco/2013-98547.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Policymakers' Horizon and the Sustainability of International Cooperation

Author

Listed:
  • Paola Conconi
  • Nicolas Sahuguet

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of policymakers' horizon on the sustainability of international cooperation. We describe a prisoners' dilemma game between two infinitely-lived countries run by policymakers. We show that re-election incentives can act as a discipline device, making it easier to sustain cooperation between policymakers with finite but potentially renewable mandates than between infinitely-lived policymakers. We also show that, when voting suffers from a recency bias, policymakers may have incentives to "collude" to get re-elected and term limits may help international cooperation.

Suggested Citation

  • Paola Conconi & Nicolas Sahuguet, 2009. "Policymakers' Horizon and the Sustainability of International Cooperation," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/98547, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/98547
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/98547/3/elections.pdf
    File Function: elections
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Besley, Timothy & Case, Anne, 1995. "Incumbent Behavior: Vote-Seeking, Tax-Setting, and Yardstick Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 25-45, March.
    2. Conconi, Paola & Perroni, Carlo, 2009. "Do credible domestic institutions promote credible international agreements?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 160-170, September.
    3. Michihiro Kandori, 1992. "Repeated Games Played by Overlapping Generations of Players," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 59(1), pages 81-92.
    4. Paola Conconi & Nicolas Sahuguet & Maurizio Zanardi, 2014. "Democratic Peace And Electoral Accountability," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 997-1028, August.
    5. Fair, Ray C, 1978. "The Effect of Economic Events on Votes for President," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 60(2), pages 159-173, May.
    6. Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 2005. "A Protectionist Bias in Majoritarian Politics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 120(4), pages 1239-1282.
    7. Glaeser, Edward L, 1997. "Self-Imposed Term Limits," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 93(3-4), pages 389-394, December.
    8. Smith, Lones, 1992. "Folk theorems in overlapping generations games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 426-449, July.
    9. Yianis Sarafidis, 2007. "What Have you Done for me Lately? Release of Information and Strategic Manipulation of Memories," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(518), pages 307-326, March.
    10. John Ferejohn, 1986. "Incumbent performance and electoral control," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 5-25, January.
    11. Dick, Andrew R. & Lott, John Jr., 1993. "Reconciling voters' behavior with legislative term limits," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 1-14, January.
    12. Eisenberg Daniel & Ketcham Jonathan, 2004. "Economic Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections: Who Blames Whom for What," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 1-25, August.
    13. Tabellini, Guido, 1990. "Domestic politics and the international coordination of fiscal policies," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3-4), pages 245-265, May.
    14. Giovanni Maggi, 1999. "The Role of Multilateral Institutions in International Trade Cooperation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 190-214, March.
    15. Jean-Pierre Benoît & Vijay Krishna, 1996. "The Folk Theorems for Repeated Games - A Synthesis," Discussion Papers 96-03, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    16. Conconi, Paola & Sahuguet, Nicolas, 2005. "Re-election Incentives and the Sustainability of International Cooperation," CEPR Discussion Papers 5401, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Emanuel Ornelas, 2005. "Rent Destruction and the Political Viability of Free Trade Agreements," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 120(4), pages 1475-1506.
    18. Lohmann, Susanne, 1993. "Electoral cycles and international policy cooperation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 1373-1391, October.
    19. Edward Glaeser, 1997. "Self-imposed term limits," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 93(3), pages 389-394, December.
    20. Putnam, Robert D., 1988. "Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(3), pages 427-460, July.
    21. Eric W. Bond & Jee-Hyeong Park, 2002. "Gradualism in Trade Agreements with Asymmetric Countries," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(2), pages 379-406.
    22. Salant, David J., 1991. "A repeated game with finitely lived overlapping generations of players," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 244-259, May.
    23. William D. Nordhaus, 1975. "The Political Business Cycle," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 42(2), pages 169-190.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Paola Conconi & Nicolas Sahuguet & Maurizio Zanardi, 2014. "Democratic Peace And Electoral Accountability," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 997-1028, August.
    2. Kempf, Hubert & Rossignol, Stéphane, 2013. "National politics and international agreements," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 93-105.
    3. J. Amegashie, 2011. "Incomplete property rights and overinvestment," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(1), pages 81-95, June.
    4. Conconi, Paola & Sahuguet, Nicolas & Zanardi, Maurizio, 2018. "Electoral incentives, term limits, and the sustainability of peace," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 15-26.
    5. Maggi, Giovanni, 2014. "International Trade Agreements," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 317-390, Elsevier.
    6. repec:eee:reveco:v:54:y:2018:i:c:p:274-288 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    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:ulb:ulbeco:2013/98547. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Benoit Pauwels). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/ecsulbe.html .

    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 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.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.