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.

Countries with rich natural resource endowments suffer from lower economic growth and various other ills. This work tests whether the resource curse also extends to the quality of regulation and the level of corruption. A theoretical framework is developed that informs the specification of interactive random effects models. A cross-national panel data set is used to estimate these models. Due to multicollinearity, only an effect of metals and ores exports on corruption can be discerned. Marginal effects computations show that whether nature corrupts or not crucially depends on a country's institutions. A broad tax base and high levels of education appear to serve as inoculations for countries against the side-effects of mineral wealth.

This thesis presents a comprehensive study of Kyrgyz foreign policy from the early 1990s to 2011. It seeks to answer the following research question: how and to what extent does regime security affect Kyrgyz foreign policymaking? In so doing, this work aims to contribute to the understanding of Central Asian politics and the foreign policy sources of weak states across the post-Soviet space. The underlying theme of this dissertation is centred on the question whether neorealist or constructivist traditions provide a more in-depth account of the erratic Kyrgyz foreign policymaking. Notwithstanding a myriad of studies on weak states, the analysis of their foreign policies is limited and mostly characterised by idiosyncratic, reductionist and great power approaches. In this respect, an interpretive and inductive framework integrative of both internal and external variables and with properly contextualised causal mechanisms may explain the international behaviour of weak states in broader and more genuine terms. Thus, the puzzle to be resolved is whether the concepts of rent-seeking and virtual politics can either substitute for or complement the New Great Game narratives in the context of weak states in general and Kyrgyzstan in particular.

傳統尋租理論認為當政府有職權得以創造超額利潤、且企業為複數時，企業除投入成本進行尋租外，會產生重複投入成本競租的後果，直到超額租金耗盡為止。但無法解釋，何以在中國政府干預市場嚴重的情形下，為何總體經濟與企業投資、獲利均保持高度成長？經由筆者實際走訪昆山進行調查後認為，尋租相關的賄賂及交際行為在具政治風險的情況下確有削減。但相關支出及支付對象乃以合法的方式固定下來，並非消失。本文認為此政企利益分配制度包含以下：土地增值的獲利及租金、企業委託報關行的外包支出、土地仲介佣金、招商業績獎金、鎮級地方政府稅收、以及各種明文規定的規費。此種相關支出的固定與合法化，筆者認為此制度有助於企業的成本評估及經營。 關鍵字：尋租、政企關係、規費、利益分配、地方政府

The Value of Political Connections: Evidence from the Czech Republic Miroslav Palanský Abstract This thesis estimates the value of political connections in the Czech Republic and it is divided into two parts. The first one explores the recently extended, most advanced publicly available data set on political party financing in the Czech Republic, covering the time period 1995-2015. We analyze basic patterns in party funding and their development over time. We focus primarily on private funding from both legal and natural persons. The data show that there exists substantial heterogeneity in the volume of private funding across parties and over time, but contributions from the government budget remain the most important source of income for all larger parties. We analyze the available data on donations and discuss several issues regarding the notion that donors may view contributions as investment, yielding possible profits in the future. In the second part, we use the data set of corporate donations to construct a proxy variable for political connections and to estimate the effect of being connected to a political party on the financial performance of such firms. We find that the connected firms perform significantly better than the non- connected ones in the years following the establishment of the...

Political Finance Reform and Public Procurement:  Evidence from Lithuania. Can political donations buy influence? This paper studies whether firms trade political contributions for public procurement contracts. To answer this question, I focus on the Lithuanian political economy. Combining data on a large number of government tenders, the universe of corporate donors and firm characteristics, I examine how a ban on corporate donations affects the awarding of procurement contracts to companies that donated in the past. Consistent with political favoritism, contributing firms’ probability of winning goes down by five percentage points as compared to that of non-donor firms after the ban. Among different mechanisms, the hypothesis that corporate donors get confidential information on competing bids prevails. The empirical results are in line with predictions from a first-price sealed-bid auction model with one informed bidder. Evidence on firm bidding and victory margins suggests that contributing firms adjust their bids in order to secure contracts at a maximum revenue. I assess that tax payers save almost one percent of GDP thanks to the reform. Gender Quotas and the Quality of Politicians. We analyze the effects of the introduction of gender quotas in candidate lists on the quality of elected politicians, as measured by the average number of years of education. We consider an Italian law which introduced gender quotas in local elections in 1993, and was abolished in 1995. As not all municipalities went through elections during this period, we identify two groups of municipalities and use a difference-in-differences estimation. We find that gender quotas are associated with an increase in the quality of elected politicians, with the effect ranging from 0.12 to 0.24 years of education. This effect is due not only to the higher number of elected women, who are on average more educated than men, but also to the lower number of low-educated elected men. The positive effect on quality is confirmed when we measure the latter with alternative indicators, it persists in the long run and it is robust to controlling for political ideology and political competition. Affirmative Action and the Power of the Elderly. There is evidence that age matters in politics. In this article we study whether implementation of affirmative action policies on gender can generate additional effects on an alternative dimension of representation, namely, the age of politicians. We consider an Italian law which introduced gender quotas in candidate lists for local elections in 1993, and was abolished in 1995. As not all municipalities went through elections during this period, we can identify two groups of municipalities and use a difference-in-differences estimation to analyze the effect of gender quotas on the age of elected politicians. We find that gender quotas are associated with election of politicians that are younger by more than one year. The effect occurs mainly due to the reduction in age of elected male politicians and is consistent with the optimizing behavior of parties or of voters. Let the Voters Choose Women. Female under-representation in politics can be the result of parties' selection of candidates and/or of voters’ electoral preferences. To assess the impact of these two channels, we exploit the introduction of Italian Law 215/2013, which prescribes both gender quotas on candidate lists and double preference voting conditioned on gender. Using a regression discontinuity design, we estimate that the law increases the share of elected female politicians by 22 percentage points. The result is driven by the increase in preference votes cast for female candidates, suggesting a salient role of double preference voting in promoting female empowerment in politics.

This paper aims at unveiling the true nature of the Czech hunting Act by modeling the competition for property rights characteristics among gamekeepers, the subsidized group, and other users of land based resources, the taxed group. We show that the subsidized gamekeepers' group seeking to decrease public opposition tries to obfuscate the true goal of its profit-oriented efforts by supporting relatively less revealing technically imperfect institutions. It does so by advertising artificially created qualities such as tradition and public interest. What hunters try to achieve technically is to shift the reference points of desire of the other users of land-based resources in order to disable them from perceiving total policy costs. As a result taxpayers' intrinsic advantage is undermined, and contrary to the efficient redistribution hypothesis a Pareto-inferior outcome is reached. Moreover taking full account of all costs of rent-seeking, including incomplete externality internalization, institutional rigidity and created moral hazard, total social costs, connected with the outcome of competition for property rights, are not minimized. Regarding empirical testing of the theoretical propositions, analyzing hunting statistics we prove that whereas the acknowledged public goals are not met, the technically imperfect Act 449/2001 Coll. creates moral hazard in favor of gamekeepers' private interests.

Depuis 2008, le thème de l’arbitrage réglementaire a attiré beaucoup d’attention. Le contournement des réglementations prudentielles (notamment des accords de Bâle) par l’utilisation de techniques de « Shadow Banking » (telles que la titrisation ou les instruments dérivés) a été dénoncé comme étant une des causes principales de la crise bancaire. D’après la littérature spécialisée, l’arbitrage réglementaire serait le résultat de failles qui émergeraient au sein des réglementations, lesquelles seraient exploitées par des arbitragistes pour minimiser leurs coûts. Cependant, l’arbitrage réglementaire n’a pas réellement fait l’objet d’une analyse théorique et économique satisfaisante permettant de comprendre pleinement ses causes et ses conséquences. La première partie de cette dissertation s’attache plus spécifiquement aux causes de l’arbitrage réglementaire. Bien que l’attention soit bien souvent portée sur l’arbitragiste qui tente de manipuler les structures juridiques de ses transactions pour capturer des opportunités de profits, nous soulignerons le rôle du régulateur qui de manière intentionnelle ou non, crée les conditions nécessaires à l’arbitrage réglementaire. Le mode de production des règles et le rôle de l’environnement institutionnel sont bien souvent omis. Ce point nous mène à discuter en détail de la différence de nature entre réglementations et règles contractuelles et son incidence sur l’arbitrage réglementaire. La seconde partie porte sur les conséquences de l’arbitrage réglementaire. Celles-ci n’ont été que partiellement discutées dans la littérature existante. Efficacité des réglementations, qualité des règles, effet redistributif, création ou destruction de richesses, concurrence réglementaire accrue ou tentative d’harmonisation des juridictions, tels seront les thèmes qui sont impactés par ce phénomène et qui seront abordés dans cette dissertation. / Since 2008, regulatory arbitrage has attracted a lot of attention. Circumventions of banking prudential rules (such as Basel rules) using shadow banking (such as securitization or derivatives instruments) have been pointed out as one of the main causes of the banking crisis. According to the financial literature, regulatory arbitrage would be the results of “loopholes” that emerge within regulations and which are used by arbitragers to minimise their regulatory cost. However, regulatory arbitrage has not truly been analysed from a theoretical and economic perspective which is key to understand fully its causes and consequences. The first part of this dissertation will focus more specifically on the causes of regulatory arbitrage. While light is usually shed on the action of arbitragers who attempt to manipulate the legal structure of their transactions to capture profit opportunities, we emphasize the role of the regulator who purposely or not, generates the necessary conditions for regulatory arbitrage to take place. The role of rules production type and institutions are usually omitted. This point leads us to discuss in detail the difference in nature between regulation and contractual rules and their incidence on regulatory arbitrage. The second part will focus on the consequences of regulatory arbitrage. These have not only been discussed partially in the existing literature. Efficiency of regulation, quality of rules, redistributive effect, creation or destruction of resources, increased regulatory competition or harmonization strategies among jurisdictions will be discussed in this dissertation as potential outcome of this phenomenon.

As relações políticas existentes na construção do planejamento das cidades brasileiras constituem o objeto de pesquisa desta tese de doutorado. Apesar da criação do Estatuto da Cidade, em 2001, pouco se avançou na garantia do direito à cidade para aquelas pessoas que mais sofrem com as diversas desigualdades sociais, construídas historicamente sob um leque de privilégios de grupos dominantes nas cidades. Entre esses grupos estão os empresários que, reunidos em associações, pautam firmemente as ações estatais, sobretudo as políticas urbanas, desde as metrópoles até as pequenas cidades. Para analisar tal ação política, utilizaremos a teoria do rent-seeking, amplamente difundida na Economia e na Ciência Política. Esta tese busca provar a existência de um rent-seeking urbano, pois o que está em disputa na cidade é a renda a partir da terra urbana, maximizando lucros e expandindo as fronteiras da acumulação do capital, o qual está imbricado em uma extensa rede financeira global e se expressa nas cidades, lócus da reprodução da vida dos cidadãos. Aplicaremos essa tese ao caso da cidade de Joinville, situada no estado de Santa Catarina, detentora da terceira maior população da região Sul do país. Joinville possui uma grande articulação de entidades empresariais com poderoso capital político, capaz de influenciar os diversos grupos sociais e políticos locais. A partir da criação do Plano Diretor de Joinville, em 2008, coincidindo com o período da grande expansão do setor imobiliário brasileiro, novos interesses entram em disputa. Para garantir o rent-seeking urbano, a coalizão de empresários precisou realinhar conservadoramente as instâncias da democracia participativa, financiar campanhas eleitorais e exercer lobbies sob os principais marcos legais em discussão. Excluindo, assim, aqueles que contestam os privilégios políticos de alguns grupos e desmandos empresariais. / The existing political relations on construction of urban planning in Brazilian cities are the research object of this doctoral thesis. Despite the creation of the City Statute in 2001, little progress was made in guaranteeing city rights for those people who suffer most with several social inequalities, historically built under a range of privileges from dominant groups in the cities. Among these groups there are entrepreneurs who participate in associations and debate firmly on state actions, mainly urban politics, from metropolis to small cities. To analyze this political action the rent-seeking theory, which is widely used on Economy and Political Science, will be used. This thesis aims to prove the existence of urban rent-seeking, because what's on stake in the city is the wealth provision of urban land, maximizing profits and expanding the borders of capital accumulation, which is interwoven into an extensive financial network and this is expressed in the cities, locus of citizen's lives. This thesis will be applied in Joinville city, located in Santa Catarina state, with the third largest population of the country's southern region. Joinville has a great political business entities articulation with plenty political power which influences several social and political groups. With the creation of Joinville masterplan in 2008, coinciding with the expansion of Brazilian real estate industry, new interests are in disputation. To ensure the urban rent-seeking, the coalition of entrepreneurs needed realign conservatively the participatory democracy, fund election campaigns and lobby the principals legal frameworks in discussion. Thereby, excluding those who contest political privilege of some groups and business entities.

Mo., Washington Univ., Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Diss.--St. Louis, 2003. / Kopie, ersch. im Verl. UMI, Ann Arbor, Mich. - Enth. 3 Beitr.