THE HOMO-ECONOMICUS MOTIVATIONAL POSTULATE AND THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICAL ... more THE HOMO-ECONOMICUS MOTIVATIONAL POSTULATE AND THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY BY VIRGINIA SCHOOL If contributions made on Constitutional Political Economy have attracted poor attention in Spain, even poorer has been the attention paid to the methodological foundations upon which these contributions are built. The present paper deals with those methodological aspects of these theories, models, and proposals directly related to one of these foundations: the so-called homo-economicus motivational postulate. Revealing this foundation, lt will be showed the enormous influence the use of this motivational postulate has on the research outcomes, that is, on the proposal for constitutional reform. To achieve these goals, it will obviously be specially valuable to take account of the ideas elaborated on this topic by J. M. Buchanan, Nobel prize winner in Economics 1986 and worldwilde acknowledged leader of Virginia school.
This is an article on the methodology of economic thought. The critical assessment of the neoclas... more This is an article on the methodology of economic thought. The critical assessment of the neoclassical research programme contained here basically comes from the contributions of J.M. Buchanan, Nobel prize winner in Economics 1986. These comments are aimed at pointing out the role that the static maximization approach plays in neoclassical analyses since L. Robbins and P. Samuelson's influential contributions came about after World war II. Just to complement this basic purpose, I present in section 4 the alternative methodological foundations J.M. Buchanan proposes and uses to replace the static maximization approach when building public choice theory, and I sketch in section 5 several personal comments about some explanatory and prescriptive limitations both neoclassical and public choice analyses share. Except in rare and anomalous cases, neither neoclassical nor public choice analyses contain concepts making reference to the non-voluntary or power influences some individuals...
How much power to tax do really enjoy the seventeen new regional governments created in democrati... more How much power to tax do really enjoy the seventeen new regional governments created in democratic Spain? What other sources of income do they dispose of? Which rules have been implemented for regulating their tax and non-tax sources of income and how are these rules influencing the behaviour of relevant political agents? These are the questions addressed in the present paper. Although no econometric estimation has to my knowledge been provided yet, the arguments and figures provided indicate that the political mobilization and the overspending incentive generated at this level of government must be considered key factors in any explanatory model of the surprising path of growth and development registered in Spain since the mid 1980s. Physical and human capital stocks increased at a spectacular rate so as to substantially narrow the gap, in comparison to European standards, that had been generated over the previous forty years of dictatorship. Public deficits and outstanding public ...
T he aim here is two-fold. First, the author intends to show that the statement that the new inst... more T he aim here is two-fold. First, the author intends to show that the statement that the new institutionalists pay no attention to aspects of distribution can be refuted. To do that, he examines works by outstanding authors from this analytical tradition. In the second place, the article tackles the review and broadening of a very well-known, orthodox graphic toolkit to carry out a very persuasive systematic analysis of the main ways that institutional reform impacts distribution and influences the total volume of transaction costs for the participants in each institutional sphere. This analysis also makes it possible to underline that the rules that certain agents perceive as causes of the transaction costs they pay are viewed by others as the mechanisms that allow them to finally obtain better distributional results, at least in the short run, even if they have to pay the habitual transaction costs associated with any negotiation. Although these ideas are certainly foreign to the ...
El analisis institucional aqui realizado permite afirmar que la nueva organizacion territorial de... more El analisis institucional aqui realizado permite afirmar que la nueva organizacion territorial del Estado implantada en Espana tras la Constitucion de 1978 ha sido una de las piezas claves del desarrollo economico y social alcanzado desde entonces. Aunque los nuevos gobiernos autonomicos realizan ya casi tantas y tan importantes tareas politicas como sus homologos en los estados federales, la organizacion existente en Espana resulta ciertamente singular. Ademas de explicar cuales son esas claves organizativas diferenciadoras, y de mostrar los efectos positivos que las mismas han tenido durante el periodo analizado, en el trabajo se aportan tambien diversas estadisticas a fin de ofrecer una vision cuantitativa y comparada de la descentralizacion lograda, tanto en materia de responsabilidades de gasto como en lo relativo a la descentralizacion del poder fiscal. El exito de estos primeros anos, sin embargo, no garantiza que esas claves organizativas puedan seguir produciendo similares ...
The current paper focuses on the Spanish electoral rules governing political competition for the ... more The current paper focuses on the Spanish electoral rules governing political competition for the central ?Congreso de los Diputados?. It is well-documented that the system as a whole has traditionally favoured one or the other of the two main political parties (PP and PSOE) at the expense of proportionality and the remaining political parties. This paper focuses on some key Spanish electoral rules and investigates how much the observed biases could be altered by introducing some alternative rules taken from the Swedish electoral system, ceteris paribus. Measures of disproportionality are made through the Loosemore-Hanby index and the Gallagher index. The electoral raw data used for our estimations comes from the 2011, 2015 and 2016 last three Spanish general elections. The basic contribution of the paper is an empirical one as it provides a new example that institutions matter for results.
THE HOMO-ECONOMICUS MOTIVATIONAL POSTULATE AND THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICAL ... more THE HOMO-ECONOMICUS MOTIVATIONAL POSTULATE AND THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY BY VIRGINIA SCHOOL If contributions made on Constitutional Political Economy have attracted poor attention in Spain, even poorer has been the attention paid to the methodological foundations upon which these contributions are built. The present paper deals with those methodological aspects of these theories, models, and proposals directly related to one of these foundations: the so-called homo-economicus motivational postulate. Revealing this foundation, lt will be showed the enormous influence the use of this motivational postulate has on the research outcomes, that is, on the proposal for constitutional reform. To achieve these goals, it will obviously be specially valuable to take account of the ideas elaborated on this topic by J. M. Buchanan, Nobel prize winner in Economics 1986 and worldwilde acknowledged leader of Virginia school.
This is an article on the methodology of economic thought. The critical assessment of the neoclas... more This is an article on the methodology of economic thought. The critical assessment of the neoclassical research programme contained here basically comes from the contributions of J.M. Buchanan, Nobel prize winner in Economics 1986. These comments are aimed at pointing out the role that the static maximization approach plays in neoclassical analyses since L. Robbins and P. Samuelson's influential contributions came about after World war II. Just to complement this basic purpose, I present in section 4 the alternative methodological foundations J.M. Buchanan proposes and uses to replace the static maximization approach when building public choice theory, and I sketch in section 5 several personal comments about some explanatory and prescriptive limitations both neoclassical and public choice analyses share. Except in rare and anomalous cases, neither neoclassical nor public choice analyses contain concepts making reference to the non-voluntary or power influences some individuals...
How much power to tax do really enjoy the seventeen new regional governments created in democrati... more How much power to tax do really enjoy the seventeen new regional governments created in democratic Spain? What other sources of income do they dispose of? Which rules have been implemented for regulating their tax and non-tax sources of income and how are these rules influencing the behaviour of relevant political agents? These are the questions addressed in the present paper. Although no econometric estimation has to my knowledge been provided yet, the arguments and figures provided indicate that the political mobilization and the overspending incentive generated at this level of government must be considered key factors in any explanatory model of the surprising path of growth and development registered in Spain since the mid 1980s. Physical and human capital stocks increased at a spectacular rate so as to substantially narrow the gap, in comparison to European standards, that had been generated over the previous forty years of dictatorship. Public deficits and outstanding public ...
T he aim here is two-fold. First, the author intends to show that the statement that the new inst... more T he aim here is two-fold. First, the author intends to show that the statement that the new institutionalists pay no attention to aspects of distribution can be refuted. To do that, he examines works by outstanding authors from this analytical tradition. In the second place, the article tackles the review and broadening of a very well-known, orthodox graphic toolkit to carry out a very persuasive systematic analysis of the main ways that institutional reform impacts distribution and influences the total volume of transaction costs for the participants in each institutional sphere. This analysis also makes it possible to underline that the rules that certain agents perceive as causes of the transaction costs they pay are viewed by others as the mechanisms that allow them to finally obtain better distributional results, at least in the short run, even if they have to pay the habitual transaction costs associated with any negotiation. Although these ideas are certainly foreign to the ...
El analisis institucional aqui realizado permite afirmar que la nueva organizacion territorial de... more El analisis institucional aqui realizado permite afirmar que la nueva organizacion territorial del Estado implantada en Espana tras la Constitucion de 1978 ha sido una de las piezas claves del desarrollo economico y social alcanzado desde entonces. Aunque los nuevos gobiernos autonomicos realizan ya casi tantas y tan importantes tareas politicas como sus homologos en los estados federales, la organizacion existente en Espana resulta ciertamente singular. Ademas de explicar cuales son esas claves organizativas diferenciadoras, y de mostrar los efectos positivos que las mismas han tenido durante el periodo analizado, en el trabajo se aportan tambien diversas estadisticas a fin de ofrecer una vision cuantitativa y comparada de la descentralizacion lograda, tanto en materia de responsabilidades de gasto como en lo relativo a la descentralizacion del poder fiscal. El exito de estos primeros anos, sin embargo, no garantiza que esas claves organizativas puedan seguir produciendo similares ...
The current paper focuses on the Spanish electoral rules governing political competition for the ... more The current paper focuses on the Spanish electoral rules governing political competition for the central ?Congreso de los Diputados?. It is well-documented that the system as a whole has traditionally favoured one or the other of the two main political parties (PP and PSOE) at the expense of proportionality and the remaining political parties. This paper focuses on some key Spanish electoral rules and investigates how much the observed biases could be altered by introducing some alternative rules taken from the Swedish electoral system, ceteris paribus. Measures of disproportionality are made through the Loosemore-Hanby index and the Gallagher index. The electoral raw data used for our estimations comes from the 2011, 2015 and 2016 last three Spanish general elections. The basic contribution of the paper is an empirical one as it provides a new example that institutions matter for results.
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