Extending Brennan and Buchanan’s model of leviathan, in which rulers represent the residual claimants of constitutionally unconstrained tax revenue, this paper presents a model in which the government provides the level of public goods that maximizes its revenue surplus as a function of the cost of emigration. To the extent that emigration is impeded, government converges toward pure monopoly provision, generating monopoly rents that facilitate the rent-seeking society. In contrast with Niskanen’s model, in which governments tend to overproduce public goods, this model suggests that governments tend toward underproduction. This result undermines the notion that government must provide public goods to overcome the underproduction of private provision; in reality, government provision may be less efficient than private provision.

We propose a model to study government formation by a legislative body composed by parties elected with a proportional representation rule. Once the legislative configuration is determined, the elected parties must form a government, choose a government policy and a distribution of legislative resources and benefits among the elected parties through a bargaining game. A mass of voters is assumed capable of voting strategically. Our goal is to study how a limitation on the available resources among legislators may affect the behavior of the agents involved in this system, both voters and legislators. We show that a decrease in the relative distance between ideologies increases the social welfare and decreases the necessary amount of resources to keep the optimal agreement. Moreover, there is an upper limit to this amount when the ideological distance increases / Propõe-se um modelo teórico para estudar a formação de governo por um corpo legislativo, composto por partidos eleitos em representação proporcional. Uma vez que a configuração do Legislativo é definida, os partidos eleitos devem formar um governo, escolher uma política de governo e uma distribuição de recursos e benefícios legislativos entre os partidos presentes na casa através de um jogo de barganha. Uma massa de eleitores é assumida capaz de votar estrategicamente. Nosso objetivo é estudar como uma limitação nos recursos disponíveis entre os legisladores pode afetar o comportamento dos agentes envolvidos no sistema, tanto eleitores quanto legisladores. Mostra-se que uma queda da distância relativa entre as ideologias aumenta o bem-estar social e diminui a quantia necessária de recursos que mantem o acordo legislativo ótimo. Ademais, há um limite superior para essa quantia quando a distância ideológica aumenta.

We propose a model to study government formation by a legislative body composed by parties elected with a proportional representation rule. Once the legislative configuration is determined, the elected parties must form a government, choose a government policy and a distribution of legislative resources and benefits among the elected parties through a bargaining game. A mass of voters is assumed capable of voting strategically. Our goal is to study how a limitation on the available resources among legislators may affect the behavior of the agents involved in this system, both voters and legislators. We show that a decrease in the relative distance between ideologies increases the social welfare and decreases the necessary amount of resources to keep the optimal agreement. Moreover, there is an upper limit to this amount when the ideological distance increases / Propõe-se um modelo teórico para estudar a formação de governo por um corpo legislativo, composto por partidos eleitos em representação proporcional. Uma vez que a configuração do Legislativo é definida, os partidos eleitos devem formar um governo, escolher uma política de governo e uma distribuição de recursos e benefícios legislativos entre os partidos presentes na casa através de um jogo de barganha. Uma massa de eleitores é assumida capaz de votar estrategicamente. Nosso objetivo é estudar como uma limitação nos recursos disponíveis entre os legisladores pode afetar o comportamento dos agentes envolvidos no sistema, tanto eleitores quanto legisladores. Mostra-se que uma queda da distância relativa entre as ideologias aumenta o bem-estar social e diminui a quantia necessária de recursos que mantem o acordo legislativo ótimo. Ademais, há um limite superior para essa quantia quando a distância ideológica aumenta.

This thesis consists of three essays concerned with endogenous fiscal policy and its interaction with political economy constraints. The first essay presented in Chapter 2 examines the cyclical behavior of endogenous government consumption over the business cycle absent a commitment mechanism in a neoclassical economy with Total Factor Productivity (TFP) shocks and investment shocks. Tax rates that finance public consumption are chosen in a time consistent way in a dynamic game between the government and a representative agent that values public goods in his utility. It is found that government consumption set without commitment behaves procyclical in response to the mentioned shocks. The government-consumption-output ratio is mildly procyclical or countercyclical depending on the selected calibration. Particularly, the elasticity of substitution between private and public goods plays an important role. The second essay showed in Chapter 3 extends the model studied in Chapter 2 adding agent heterogeneity in wealth and labor productivity. The aim of this study is to identify how policy outcomes are affected by inequality of households, particularly the median voter's choice of tax rates that finance public goods. For a standard RBC calibration to the U.S. economy the result is a strong procyclical comovement of public consumption with output, and a relatively weak procyclical comovement of the output share of public consumption with output, that becomes stronger with rising inequality. The politico-economic channel induces causality from output to lagged tax rates, therefore after a Hicks neutral productivity shock the median voter tries to delay the increase in the tax rate, such that the increment will take place just after the accumulation of more capital. In the case of equal agents the response is to decrease the tax rate in the first year after the shock. Additionally, the model predicts that the size of government consumption decreases with inequality. The last essay in Chapter 4 presents a stylized model of external sovereign debt that incorporates corruption in the form of rent-seeking groups by which the choice to cooperate or non-cooperate in providing public goods, in extracting rents and in issuing debt, is endogenized. More than one rent-seeking group originates a "tragedy of the commons" over fiscal resources that make the borrower economy to show collective fiscal impatience. External creditors envision that impatience and require higher interest rates for buying bonds, exacerbating the problem of high debt. The high level of interest rates decreases the wealth of the country and endangers its ability to repay the debt. We show that bailout plans, defined as temporary loans with lower than market level interest rates, are not effective in such economies.

Esta pesquisa analisa um conjunto de 76 decisões proferidas pelo Tribunal de Contas da União Brasileiro, relativas às irregularidades de sobrepreço em contratos de obras publicas federais licitadas e executadas, com o objetivo de identificar estratégias de captura de renda e as respostas da Corte de contas. Estas decisões são denominadas de acórdãos e foram selecionadas pelo próprio Tribunal para servirem de paradigma para futuras decisões. A pesquisa identificou 4 diferentes estratégias de captura de renda envolvendo manipulação de índices referenciais de preço de itens unitários e verificou que as determinações contidas nos acórdãos analisados limitam-se a corrigir a irregularidade e a penalizar os responsáveis com multas previamente conhecidas. / The study analyzes 76 decisions made by the Brazilian Supreme Audit Court, regarding overpricing irregularities in public bidding contracting for federal construction and execution, in order to identify rent-seeking strategies and Court responses. These decisions are called \"acórdãos\" and they were selected by the Supreme Audit Court to guide future decision making. The study identified 4 different rent-seeking strategies involving the manipulation of price reference indexes for unit items and it also verified that the decisions are limited to correct the irregularity and to penalize the responsible ones with prior known fines.

Práce se věnuje analýze a souvislostem důchodového systému České republiky. Důraz je kladen na demografickou analýzu, která uvozuje čtenáře do celé problematiky. Vyvrací mnoho pesimistických scénářů o budoucím vývoji ekonomické struktury obyvatel a upozorňuje na hlavní nedostatky při dlouhodobých (50ti a víceletých) predikcích budoucího demografického i ekonomického vývoje. Na základě analýzy a predikce průběžného důchodového systému je explicitně ukázáno, že jej lze konformně ?reformovat? a zachovat jej jako základní pilíř českého důchodového systému.

<p>The Capturetheory wants to give an alternative explanation for the need of regulation. From this point if view the government does not have enough information to make an optimal regulation. There is a possibility for different interest groups to take advantage of the political arena by rent- seeking behaviour. An industry may be willing to be regulated to protect itself from competition. The objective of this paper is to account for the pros and cons of the theory of regulatory capture and also if it can be applied to the Swedish market of pharmaceuticals. The theory of regulatory capture is first and foremost a theory of the motives behind regulation. The Swedish market for pharmaceuticals has been analysed by looking into the underlying force of both the pharmaceutical industry and that of the State. There is room for the regulatory agencies to be captured by the industry because of the information provided to them by the industry. The concluding findings show that the Capture theory can applied to the Swedish market for pharmaceuticals.</p>

The Capturetheory wants to give an alternative explanation for the need of regulation. From this point if view the government does not have enough information to make an optimal regulation. There is a possibility for different interest groups to take advantage of the political arena by rent- seeking behaviour. An industry may be willing to be regulated to protect itself from competition. The objective of this paper is to account for the pros and cons of the theory of regulatory capture and also if it can be applied to the Swedish market of pharmaceuticals. The theory of regulatory capture is first and foremost a theory of the motives behind regulation. The Swedish market for pharmaceuticals has been analysed by looking into the underlying force of both the pharmaceutical industry and that of the State. There is room for the regulatory agencies to be captured by the industry because of the information provided to them by the industry. The concluding findings show that the Capture theory can applied to the Swedish market for pharmaceuticals.

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"Essays on Social Conflict and Reform" consists of four essays that study the political economy of policy reform. Social Conflict with Passive Groups examines conflicts over the distribution of income where groups that engage in appropriative activities as well as groups that are passive in this respect participate. Democratization, Rent Seeking, and Economic Transition uses a model of social conflict to determine the political and economic reform space and the economic performance in a society undergoing a transition from authoritarian rule to democracy and market economy. Constitutional Constraints and Redistributive Activities analyzes the effects of constitutional constraints against redistribution on the outcome of social conflicts. The Break-up of the Ruble Zone: Undertaking Monetary Reform while Building Democratic Institutions applies the theoretical findings of this dissertation to explain differences in monetary reform between countries in the former Soviet Union. / SITE, Stockholm Institute of Transition