Description
This book analyzes the links between political economics, governance structures and the distribution of political power in economic policy making. The book theoretically explains and empirically quantifies these interactions. The analysis includes both public good policies and redistributive policies. Part I of the book presents the conceptual foundations of political-economic bargaining and interest group analysis. After presenting the underlying theory, Part II of the book examines ideology, prescription and political power coefficients; Part III analyzes a number of specific structures; and Part IV presents a framework for political econometrics with a number of empirical applications and testable hypotheses. In all four parts of the book, four analytical dimensions of public policy are distinguished: governance structures, political economy, mechanism design and incidence.
Table of Contents
Part I. Political Power and Economic Analysis: 1. Public policy: the lens of political economy; 2. The Nash solution to the bargaining problem; 3. The Harsanyi solution to the bargaining problem; 4. Political-economic analysis; 5. Normative political-economic analysis; 6. Dynamic political-economic analysis; Part II. Ideology, Prescription, and Political Power Coefficients: 7. Political power, ideology, and political organizational structures; 8. Political power, influence, and lobbying; 9. Constitutional prescription and political power coefficients; Part III. Analysis of Specific Structures: 10. The political economy of commodity market intervention; 11. The political economy of public research and development; 12. Political-economic analysis of redistributive policy and public good investments; 13. Interest groups, coalition breaking, and productive policies; 14. Policy reform and compensation; 15. Political-economic analysis of land reform; 16. Political-economic analysis of water resource systems; 17. The political-economic lens on quality and public standard regulations; 18. Political-economic analysis in transition economies; 19. The power of bureaucracies: the European commission and EU policy reforms; Part IV. Empirical Applications of Political Power Estimation: 20. Political econometrics; 21. The political econometrics of the Israeli dairy industry; 22. Flexible policy instruments given a political power distribution; 23. Estimating statistical properties of power weight parameters and their temporal shifts; 24. Role of institutions in the joint determination of PERTs and PESTs.
