Cycle avoiding trajectories,strategic agendas,and the duality of memory and foresight: An informal exposition

This paper considers the notion of cycle avoiding trajectories in majority voting tournaments and shows that they underlie and guide several apparently disparate voting processes. The set of alternatives that are maximal with respect to such trajectories constitutes a new solution set of considerable significance. It may be dubbed the Banks set, in recognition of the important paper by Banks (1985) that first made use of this set. The purpose of this paper is to informally demonstrate that the Banks set is a solution set of broad relevance for understanding group decision making in both cooperative and non-cooperative settings and under both sincere and sophisticated voting. In addition, we show how sincere and sophisticated voting processes can be viewed as mirror images of one another — embodying respectively, “dmemory” and “foresight.” We also show how to develop the idea of a “sophisticated agenda,” one in which the choice of what alternatives to propose is itself a matter of strategic calculation.     

Family relationships and social competence during late adolescence

Data from a large sample of late adolescents was used to examine associations between family relationships (reported closeness to parents and siblings) and perceived social competence. Significant positive relationships were found between family bonds and the social competence measures, which included social self-esteem, instrumentality, expressiveness, shyness, and degree of satisfaction/ease in same- and opposite-sex peer relationships. There was no evidence of differential effects of sibling versus parent relationships upon adolescent social competence.This project was supported by NIMH Grant 5 R01 MH34570.Received Ph.D. from Northwestern University.     

Tax Competition and Income Redistribution: An Empirical Analysis for Switzerland

Tax competition is supposed to lead to thecollapse of the welfare state because, first, it willbecome difficult for a single jurisdiction to levy aredistribution tax upon the rich and mobile, andsecond, such a policy, if undertaken in onejurisdiction, will attract poor individuals from otherjurisdictions and erode internal redistributionpolicies. In this paper, the impact of personal incometaxes and transfers on residence decisions oftaxpayers is analyzed with Swiss subfederal data. Therelationship of tax competition and the erosion of theSwiss welfare state is tested with aggregate data onincome redistribution.     

Municipal debt in Switzerland: new empirical results

Switzerland has experienced extensive institutional reforms at the local level that could influence local debt. These reforms have included municipal mergers, greater inter-communal cooperation, reformed political decision-making mechanisms, and the introduction of new public management measures. Many of these reforms originated at the cantonal level. However, the institutional diversity among Swiss municipalities hardly has diminished. A cross-sectional analysis for the 137 largest Swiss cities and villages in 2004 shows that direct democratic rights and a high degree of fiscal autonomy lead to a lower level of local debt. There is no statistical support for the hypothesis that reforms following the new public management guidelines had an effect on debt levels.     

Common pool effects and local public debt in amalgamated municipalities

This paper investigates whether the large scale municipal amalgamations in the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg in the early 1970s led to considerable common pool exploitation. Through amalgamation the resources of several municipalities are pooled together disclosing the former independent municipalities a larger source of funds. Additionally, the pooling also decreases the cost of local public goods, as those have to be borne by the whole of the amalgamated municipality. By exploiting the huge variance in the amalgamation process in terms of number of participating municipalities, but also in municipality size or amalgamation strategy, we identify considerable common pool effects. Amalgamated municipalities show considerably stronger acceleration in debt accumulation compared to non-amalgamating municipalities. This common pool exploitation is stronger if more municipalities participate and when municipalities amalgamate by annexation.