Candidate Entry, Screening, and the Political Budget Cycle

We investigate whether relevant private information about citizens’ competence in political office can be credibly revealed by their entry and campaign expenditure decisions, as opposed to choice of policy once in office. We find that this depends on whether voters and candidates have common or conflicting interests ; only in the former case can entry be revealing in equilibrium. We apply these results to Rogoff’s (1990) model of the political budget cycle, allowing for candidate entry, as well as elections : as interests are common, low-ability candidates are screened out at the entry stage, and so there is no signaling via fiscal policy (i.e. no “political budget cycle”). In a variant of the Rogoff model where citizens differ in honesty, rather than ability, interests are conflicting, and so the political budget cycle can persist in equilibrium.Asymmetric Information ; Citizen-Candidate ; Representative Democracy ; Signaling Games ; Political Budget Cycles

DO ELECTIONS ALWAYS NOTIVATE INCUMBENTS? LEARNING VS CAREER CONCERNS

This paper studies a principal-agent model of the relationship between officeholder and the electorate, where everyone is initially uninformed about the officeholder’s ability. If office-holder effort and ability interact in the determination of performance in office, then an office-holder has an incentive to learn i.e. raise effort so that performance becomes a more accurate signal of her ability. Elections reduce the learning effect, and the reduction in this effect may more than offset the positive “career concerns” effect of elections on effort. Moreover, when this occurs, appointment of officials may welfare-dominate elections.Career Concerns ; Elections ; Citizen-Candidate ; Learning ; Effort ; Incomplete Information

Institutions, politics, and macroeconomic performance : on incomplete information in political agency games

This thesis analyses the interactions between politics, institutions, and policy outcomes using a political agency framework with incomplete information. After an introductory chapter, we develop a political agency model that is consistent with the empirical evidence on politically-induced fiscal cycles, and especially budget deficit cycles. We find that electoral concerns create, on average, a rising budget deficit prior to elections. The net welfare effect of elections is ambiguous: although they give rise to a deficit bias, they increase the quality of office-holders. The next chapter uses this microfounded model to study the incentive and welfare effects that the imposition of fiscal constraints has on policy makers' decision to create excessive deficits. Three types of constraints are investigated: deficit ceilings, a Golden Rule of public investment, and a balanced-budget rule. We find that constraints are effective in reducing excessive budget deficits - although at the expense of unconstrained instruments. Only one can yield higher welfare than the fully discretionary case. No appropriately designed fiscal constraint can achieve the first-best. In Chapter 4, we show that two key results in the political agency literature are not robust. The first is that a cutoff rule followed by voters in re-electing an incumbent always motivates the latter. The second is that this cutoff rule is an optimal incentive mechanism. Under symmetric incomplete information, the first result can be reversed since elections can reduce the experimentation effect of office-holders (i. e. the incentive to raise effort so that performance becomes a more accurate signal of ability). This reduction may more than offset the positive effect of elections on effort. When incentives to stand for office are modelled, result two can be overturned since a revealing equilibrium at the candidate entry stage can always be designed. This screens out low-ability citizens from policy making and therefore eliminates the adverse selection problem. If this latter is more important than moral hazard issues, the cutoff rule at the policy stage is no longer an optimal mechanism. In Chapter 5, we investigate in more details whether relevant (private) information about citizens' competence in political office (ability, honesty, etc. ) can be revealed by their entry and campaign expenditure decisions. We find that this depends on whether voters and candidates have common or conflicting interests; only in the former case can entry be revealing in equilibrium. We apply these results to Rogoff's (1990) Political Budget Cycles model, allowing for candidate entry: as interests are common, low-ability candidates are screened out at the entry stage, and so there is no signalling via fiscal policy. In a variant of the Rogoff model where citizens differ in honesty, rather than ability, interests are conflicting, and so the political budget cycle can persist in equilibrium. The final chapter concludes the thesis

Do elections always motivate incumbents?

This paper studies a principal-agent model of the relationship between office-holders and the electorate, where the office-holder is initially uninformed about herability (following Holmström, 1999). If office-holder effort and ability interact in the “production function” that determines performance in office, then an office-holder has an incentive to experiment, i.e. raise effort so that performance becomes a more accurate signal of her ability. Elections reduce the experimentation effect, and the reduction in this effect may more than o¤set the positive “career concerns” effect of elections on effort. Moreover, when this occurs, appointment of officials (random selection from the citizenry and tenure) may Pareto-dominate elections

Candidate entry, screening, and the political budget cycle

We investigate whether relevant private information about citizens’ competence in political office can be credibly revealed by their entry and campaign expenditure decisions, as opposed to choice of policy once in office. We find that this depends on whether voters and candidates have common or conflicting interests; only in the former case can entry be revealing in equilibrium. We apply these results to Rogoff’s (1990) model of the political budget cycle, allowing for candidate entry, as well as elections: as interests are common, low-ability candidates are screened out at the entry stage, and so there is no signaling via fiscal policy (i.e. no “political budget cycle”). In a variant of the Rogoff. model where citizens differ in honesty, rather than ability, interests are conflicting, and so the political budget cycle can persist in equilibrium

Do elections always motivate incumbents? : learning vs. re-election concerns

This paper studies a principal-agent model of the relationship between office-holder and an electorate, where everyone is initially uninformed about the office-holder’s ability. If office-holder effort and ability interact in the determination of performance in office, then an office-holder has an incentive to learn, i.e., raise effort so that performance becomes a more accurate signal of her ability. Elections reduce the learning effect, and the reduction in this effect may more than offset the positive “re-election concerns” effect of elections on effort, implying higher effort with appointment. When this occurs, appointment of officials may welfare-dominate elections

Formal Verification of SIGNAL Programs: Application to a Power Transformer Station Controller

International audienceWe present a methodology for the verification of reactive systems, and its application to a case study. Systems are specified using the synchronous data flow language Signal. As this language is based on an equational approach (i.e. Signal programs are constraint equations between signals), it is natural to translate its Boolean part into a system of polynomial equations over three values denoting true, false and absent. Using operations in algebraic geometry on the polynomials, it is possible to check properties concerning the system, such as liveness, invariance, reachability and attractivity. We apply this method to the verification of the automatic circuit breaking control system of an electric power transformer station. This system handles the reaction to electrical defects on high voltage lines

Software-Based Burst Mode Reception Implementation for Time-domain Wavelength Interleaved Networks

International audienceWe demonstrate burst mode functionality on a continuous commercial receiver piloted by real-time control plane in an end-to-end sub-wavelength switching test-bed. The results show the receiver can maintain its continuous performance with marginal penalty regardless of data burst absence duration. Introduction Switching sub-wavelength entities inside the big pipes channels appears as a promising solution for the operator that has to build a network with an efficient filling and different services. Access to the sub-wavelength granularity directly at the optical layer is an alternative to electrical solution to reduce cost and power consumption by saving on electrical transit and electrical-to-optical and optical-to-electrical conversions. Amongst the various Sub-Lambda Photonically Switched Network (SLPSN) solutions, Time-domain Wavelength Interleaved Networking (TWIN) is an interesting solution since it provides optically transparent sub-wavelength grooming at intermediate/core nodes, while the intelligence and processing power remains at control plane and the edge node

Modélisation unidimensionnelle multi-physique du comportement d'un joint à faces radiales pour la maintenance d'un circuit carburant

La présente étude porte sur la modélisation unidimensionnelle multi-physique d'un joint d’étanchéité à faces radiales appelés « garnitures mécaniques » pour des arbres tournants. Ces garnitures fonctionnent à des pressions très élevées générées par le film de lubrification entre les faces des joints dont les performances sont directement affectées par la géométrie de l'interface qui dépend des effets thermiques, mécaniques et de la cinématique appliqués. La modélisation unidimensionnelle proposée prend en compte le transfert thermique et la déformation des faces du joint, couplés au modèle de Reynolds décrivant le champ de pression dans le film lubrifiant. Le choix de ce type de modélisation résulte dans le compromis entre le nombre de paramètres du modèle et la complexité du code de calcul associé. Ce modèle permet ainsi de déterminer de façon simple et rapide les performances caractéristiques d’une garniture mécanique. Cette démarche de modélisation est appliquée au cas d’une garniture mécanique à stator flottant pour un circuit carburant de turboréacteur de faibles dimensions (rayons intérieur et extérieur respectivement de 6 et 7,4 mm) et fonctionnant à des vitesses de rotation relativement élevées (4000 à 5000 tr/min) pour des pressurisations extérieures relativement faibles (0,3 à 0,6 MPa). La détermination des paramètres du modèle est explicitée et les résultats de simulation sont comparés avec les résultats expérimentaux issus de bancs machines et de banc laboratoire afin de caractériser la qualité du modèle obtenu

Quantum-dash mode-locked laser source for wavelength-tunable 56 Gbit/s DQPSK

Présentation oraleInternational audienceWe investigate wavelength tunable 56 Gbit/s DQPSK systems using comb generation in a quantum-dash mode-locked laser. Relative intensity noise and bit error rate is measured for each mode. Error-free operation is obtained over 9 WDM channels with 100 GHz spacing