Accountability in Government and Regulatory Policies: Theory and Evidence

This paper analyzes the political economy of regulatory and judicial appointment rules. I study a model of price-setting by a political principal faced with a firm with unknown costs, and endowed with an information-gathering technology whose efficiency rises with the effort exerted by two accountable supervisors (a regulator and a judge). This set-up captures the institutions of several international markets. The model predicts that reforms toward election rather than appointment of regulators are more likely the less efficient is the information-gathering technology, the less stringent are the investment concerns of society, the stronger are regulators’ revolving-door motivations, and the closer is political competition. These predictions are consistent with US electric power market data. Moreover, in accordance with the model, electricity rates are lower and respond less to shock in input costs in states that elect their regulators or their High Court judges.Election, Agency, Judges, Regulation, Electricity

Endogenous Price Mechanisms,Capture and Accountability Rules: Theory and Evidence

This paper analyzes the constitutional determinants of cost reimbursement rules. In order to design the optimal incentive schemes, a possibly partisan planner will take into account the market cost structure, the institutional design of the supervision hierarchical structure and its technology. I employ electricity data from the U.S. electric power market to test the model’s predictions. The evidence shows that reforms from low powered incentive scheme (COS) to high powered one (PBR) are linked to high cost industries, the presence of elected supervisors, high inter-party platform distance and large (slim) majority when the reformer is Republican (Democratic). Moreover, there is some evidence in the data that performance-based regulation lowers regulated prices.Industrial Policy, Political Economy, Regulation and Incentives

The Political Economy of Incentive Regulation: Theory and Evidence from US States

The determinants of incentive regulation are a key issue in industrial policy. I study an asymmetric information model of incentive rules selection by a political principal endowed with an information-gathering technology whose efficiency increases with the effort exerted by two accountable supervisors (a regulator and a judge). This set up captures the institutions of several international markets. The model predicts that reforms toward higher powered rules are more likely the more inefficient (efficient) is the production (information-gathering) technology, the less tight is political competition and the greater are pro-consumer supervisors’ incentives. This prediction is consistent with evidence based on US electric power market data.Incentive Schemes, Accountability Rules, Regulatory Capture

Dependent Controllers and Regulation Policies: Theory and Evidence

This paper analyzes the effects of supervisors’ (i.e., regulators and judges) selection rules on regulated prices. A checks and balances’ regulatory review process strengthens the role of the judicial power and election increases the populism of implicitly motivated supervisors. Election arises when the risk related to expropriation of sunk investments and the inter-party distance are lower. Employing U.S. electric power market’s data, the empirical evidence strongly confirms these predictions. Indeed, when treated as endogenous, only the election of administrative law judges and not the one of regulators significantly lowers the level of electricity rates. Moreover a more effective supervision technology shows a marginal negative effect on regulated rates as well.Election, Agency, Judges, Regulation, Electricity

Combining Social Sciences, Geoscience and Archaeology to Understand Societal Collapse

Despite its apparently obvious conclusion that adverse environmental conditions must produce economic and institutional crises, the 'collapse archaeology' literature has been criticized for its lack of a formal theory, a credible measurement strategy and a proper understanding of the roles of environmental shocks. To tackle this issue, we propose to combine a time inconsistency theory of state formation and evolution¿i.e., state-building, institutional proxies based on this model and highly granular simulated climate data. To clarify our proposal, we apply it to the study of state-building in Bronze Age Mesopotamia, and we show that moderate droughts shaped these economies directly via deteriorated production conditions as well as indirectly via institutional resilience

Endogenous Institutions and Economic Outcomes.

This paper evaluates the relative importance of a "culture of cooperation," understood as the implicit reward from cooperating in prisoner's dilemma and investment types of activities, and "inclusive political institutions," which enable the citizenry to check the executive authority. I divide Europe into 120 km X 120 km grid cells, and I exploit exogenous variation in both institutions driven by persistent medieval history. To elaborate, I document strong first-stage relationships between present-day norms of trust and respect and the severity of consumption risk-i.e., climate volatility-over the 1000-1600 period and between present-day regional political autonomy and the factors that raised the returns on elite-citizenry investments in the Middle Ages, i.e., the terrain ruggedness and the direct access to the coast. Using this instrumental variables approach, I show that only culture has a first order effect on development, even after controlling for country fixed effects, medieval innovations, the present-day role of medieval geography, and the factors modulating the impact of institutions. Crucially, the excluded instruments have no direct impact on development, and the effect of culture holds within pairs of adjacent grid cells with different medieval climate volatility. An explanation for these results is that culture, but not a more inclusive political process, is necessary to produce public-spirited politicians and push voters to punish political malfeasance. Micro-evidence from Italian Parliament data supports this idea

Property Rights, Transaction Costs, and the Limits of the Market

Although the relevance of property rights and transaction costs for trade and innovation are well-known, we still lack a formal framework to think about their origins and interplay. Within trade interactions, fully protecting the original owners' property implies that some high-valuation potential buyers inefficiently refuse to buy it because of transaction costs. When instead property rights are weak, low-valuation potential buyers inefficiently expropriate the original owners' property. The trade-off between these two misallocations entails that property rights will be weaker the larger transaction costs are regardless of whether they are driven by frictions outside the control of traders or determined by the mix of the dispersion in their valuation and either the original owners' market power or their privileged information. A similar conclusion holds true for an upstream firm's property rights on an input necessary to a downstream firm to introduce a new technology and whose cost is random and ex ante non contractible. This time, transaction costs rise with the likelihood of a more productive technology. All these implications survive when a group of traders/innovators has a larger political influence on institutional design and when the disincentive to effort effect of weak property rights is taken into account. Crucially, the model predictions are consistent with the negative effects of proxies for market frictions and failures on measures of the protection of personal, intellectual, and financial property for a panel of 135 countries spanning the 2006-2015 period. Evidence from several identification strategies suggests that these relationships are indeed causal

Endogenous (In)Formal Institutions.

Despite the huge evidence documenting the relevance of inclusive political institutions and a culture of cooperation, we still lack a framework that identifies their origins and interaction. In a model in which an elite and a citizenry try to cooperate in consumption risk-sharing and investment, we show that a rise in the investment value encourages the elite to introduce more inclusive political institutions to convince the citizenry that a sufficient part of the returns on joint investments will be shared. In addition, accumulation of culture rises with the severity of consumption risk if this is not too large and thus cheating is not too appealing. Finally, the citizenry may over-accumulate culture to credibly commit to cooperate in investment when its value falls and so inclusive political institutions are at risk. These predictions are consistent with the evolution of activity-specific geographic factors, monasticism, and political institutions in a panel of 90 European regions spanning the 1000-1600 period. Evidence from several identification strategies suggests that the relationships we uncover are causal