MPRA Munich Personal RePEc Archive Referenda as a Catch - 22
نویسندگان
چکیده
The result of a referendum delivers a signi cant amount of information about social preferences to each composite member of the society. This paper argues that, beyond this obvious fact, the choice not to o¤er a referendum by an authority, although permitted to do so, may enhance as well the information individuals posses about social preferences. The addition of a referendum option in the rules of a game, that is, by enabling the authority to o¤er referenda at will, results in an assured re-election of authorities that implement socially bene cial policies, and in a decrease of the re-election probability of authorities that implement socially obnoxious policies. In a sense, by allowing an authority to o¤er referenda, an inescapable Catch-22 is introduced in the game, which inhibits the re-election of a measure of "bad" authorities and, thus, con rms that one of the main bene ts of a democratic institution is the preservation of "good" authorities in power.
منابع مشابه
MPRA Munich Personal RePEc Archive
The Basel II IRB approach revisited: do we use the correct model?
متن کاملMPRA Munich Personal RePEc Archive
We conduct two experiements of the claim that people are overconfident. We develop new tests of overplacement which are based on a formal Bayesian model. Our two experiments, on easy quizzes, find overplacement. More precisely, we find apparently overconfident data that cannot be accounted for by a rational population of expected utility maximizers with a good understanding of the nature of the...
متن کاملMPRA Munich Personal RePEc Archive
We study the Diamond-Dybvig [3] model as developed in Green and Lin [5] and Peck and Shell [7]. We dispense with the notion of a bank as a coalition of depositors. Instead, our bank is a self-interested agent with a technological advantage in recordkeeping. We examine the implications of the resulting agency problem for the design of bank contracts and the possibility of bank-run equilibria. Fo...
متن کاملMPRA Munich Personal RePEc Archive Mathematics vs . Statistics in tackling Environmental Economics uncertainty
In this paper the appropriate background in Mathematics and Statistics is considered in developing methods to investigate Risk Analysis problems associated with Environmental Economics uncertainty. New senses of uncertainty are introduced and a number of sources of uncertainty are discussed and presented. The causes of uncertainty are recognized helping to understand how they affect the adopted...
متن کامل