Valuable legacy? The effect of inherited fiscal rules

Public Choice - The working mechanism of national fiscal rules depends strongly on whether a government must comply with its own rules or inherited ones. In the former case, a government usually...     

Why do parties use primaries?: Political selection versus candidate incentives

This paper contrasts empirically two possible explanations for the party decision to use primaries: desire to improve political selection (selection effect), or desire to increase political competition—and incentives—among candidates (incentive effect). Using a simple model of endogenous primaries, I show that each explanation implies a different relation between primary adoption and the strength of partisan support. I estimate this relation using the case of Latin American presidential primaries and find robust evidence that the incentive effect dominates the selection effect.     

Is the Tax Collection Effort an Indicator of the Financial Condition of Spanish Municipalities?

ABSTRACT

The financial crisis beginning in 2007 drastically affected the financial resources of different governmental organizations, causing critical imbalances between resources and expenditure needs. This study aims to analyze whether the municipal tax collection effort in Spain could be an indicator of the financial condition of these institutions. As a preliminary step, a new methodology is used to assess their financial condition. We test tax collection effort as an indicator on a sample of more than 5,000 Spanish municipalities with fewer than 75,000 inhabitants. Results confirm that the budgetary solvency dimension is associated with the tax collection effort for all municipalities studied. Furthermore, in municipalities with populations of fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, the level of the tax collection effort is indicative of most of the financial condition dimensions.     

Congressional Voting on Term Limits

Between 1990 and 1995,twenty-three states unilaterally imposedterm limits on their own delegations toCongress. In 1995 the House ofRepresentatives defeated a constitutionalamendment that would have limited the termsfor all of Congress. Only weeks later, theSupreme Court struck down the individualstate laws. In 1997 the House againbrought the issue to a vote, which alsofailed. This paper models congressionalvoting on term limits with a simple gamewithin an interest-group theory withlegislators as imperfect agents ofconstituents. The game foremost predictsthat members from term-limited states wouldbe more likely to support term limits inthe first vote but no more likely on thesecond vote. The empirical section employsprobit, multinomial logit, and orderedprobit maximum likelihood estimations toconfirm the stated hypotheses. Among otherresults, in particular both the joint andconditional probability of a `yea' on thefirst vote and a subsequent `nay' on thesecond vote is higher for members fromstates that had unilaterally self-imposedterm limits. The results are robust tomodel specification, estimator, andalternative sampling. Implications areproposed in the concluding comments.     

The 14/2007 Law on Biomedical Research: comments on ethical and scientific aspects]

The Spanish Law on biomedical investigation is analyzed from the scientific and ethical points of view. In the author's opinion, some terms used in the text in order to avoid ethical and legal conflicts are not right from the biological point of view.     

From corruption to extortion: Conceptualization of post-communist corruption

Moral outrage and lack of comparison distorts the understanding of the natureand politically determined functions of governmental corruption in post-communist transition. As post-communist societies move towards open market systems and corruption is no longer limited to the public sector, politics is transformed into a potent tool for illegal transactions. The political structureitself creates corrupt practices that become a structural feature of transition societies. This article offers first a critical discussion of both moral theories of corruption and the thesis that posits a link between corruption and democracy deficit in post-communist countries. Subsequently, it sketches a neo-functionalist approach that puts corruption in a specific social context.With respect to East/Central Europe, corruption is presented as a betrayal ofpublic trust that serves specific requirements of an emerging ``extortioniststate.' These requirements relate to the expansion of extortion opportunitiesand their institutionalization into a semblance of a Tule of law system.     

Outstanding ethical-legal issues on biobanks. An overview on the regulations of the Member States of the Eurobiobank project.

EuroBiobank (EBB) was created in 2001. This is a network of European biological banks made up by 7 member States. The purpose of the network is to ease the access to the biological resources of the human being in patients who suffer uncommon diseases. This study deals mainly with the ethical-legal debate that has arisen in those States, as well as the existing legal regulation and the proposed recommendations for its possible solution. Likewise, there is a special mention about the informed consent, the possible use in the future of the samples in relation to its commercial use as industrial property rights and to Directive 2004/03 that was adopted by the European Parliament 31 March, 2004.