The Paradox of New Members in the EU Council of Ministers: A Non-cooperative Bargaining Analysis

Power indices suggest that adding new members to a voting body may increase the power of an existing member, even if the number of votes of all existing members and the decision rule remain constant. This phenomenon is known as the paradox of new members. This paper uses the leading model of majoritarian bargaining and shows that the paradox is predicted in equilibrium for past EU enlargements. Furthermore, a majority of members would have been in favor of the 1981 enlargement even if members were bargaining over a fixed budget.Majoritarian Bargaining, Weighted Voting, Power Measures, EU Enlargement, Paradox of New Members

Inequity Aversion May Increase Inequity

Inequity aversion models have been used to explain equitable payoff divisions in bargaining games. I show that inequity aversion can actually increase the asymmetry of payoff division if unanimity is not required. This is due to the analogy between inequity aversion and risk aversion. Inequity aversion may also affect comparative statics: the advantage of being proposer can decrease as players become more impatient.Noncooperative Bargaining, Coalition Formation, Inequity Aversion

Altruism, Spite and Competition in Bargaining Games

This paper shows that altruism may be beneficial in bargaining when there is competition for bargaining partners. In a game with random proposers, the most altruistic player has the highest material payoff if players are sufficiently patient. However, this advantage is eroded as the discount factor increases, and if players are perfectly patient altruism and spite become irrelevant for material payoffs.altruism, spite, bargaining, competition, coalition formation

Bargaining in Legislatures: A New Donation Paradox

It is well known that proposers have an advantage in the canonical model of bargaining in legislatures: proposers are sure of being part of the coalition that forms, and, conditional on being in a coalition, a player receives more as a proposer than as a coalition partner. In this paper I show that, if parties di¤er in voting weight, it is possible for a party to donate part of its proposing probability to another party and be better-o¤ as a result. This can happen even if the recipient never includes the donor in its proposals. Even though actually being the proposer is valuable, having a higher probability of being proposer may be harmful.legislative bargaining, weighted majority games, voting paradoxes

Inequity Aversion May Increase Inequity in Majoritarian Bargaining

Inequity aversion models have been used to explain equitable payoff divisions in bargaining games. I show that inequity aversion can actually increase the asymmetry of payoff division inside the coalition that forms in majoritarian bargaining games.noncooperative bargaining, majority games, inequity aversion

Demand commitment in legislative bargaining

Morelli (American Political Science Review, 1999) provides a majoritarian bargaining model in which the parties make payoff demands and the order of moves is chosen by the leading party. Morelli's main proposition states that the ex post distribution of payoffs inside the coalition that forms is proportional to the homogeneous representation of the game. We provide a counterexample and prove a weaker result: proportional payoffs hold if the rules are modified so that the parties must move in decreasing order of weight.demand commitment majority games politics

Anomalous self-diffusion in a freely evolving granular gas near the shearing instability

The self-diffusion coefficient of a granular gas in the homogeneous cooling state is analyzed near the shearing instability. Using mode-coupling theory, it is shown that the coefficient diverges logarithmically as the instability is approached, due to the coupling of the diffusion process with the shear modes. The divergent behavior, which is peculiar of granular gases and disappears in the elastic limit, does not depend on any other transport coefficient. The theoretical prediction is confirmed by molecular dynamics simulation results for two-dimensional systems

Euro-Mediterranean Process - Union for the Mediterranean: Macroeconomic and financial developments during the global crisis at the southern rim of the Mediterranean

Although the global financial and economic crisis hurt economies worldwide, the economies at the southern Mediterranean region have done relatively well to weather this global hurricane. Economic growth in the region has slowed down but the size of the trough of these economies' business cycle has ultimately been dependent on the length and vigour of domestic economic policy reactions. Escaping from a difficult period featuring soaring food and oil prices the economies of the southern Mediterranean region are faced with new challenges that impact both their real and financial sectors, as negative effects from their real sector spilled over to their financial sectors. This chapter analyzes recent macroeconomic, monetary and financial developments, the use of fiscal, monetary and financial policy instruments, the volatility at their financial markets, trade openness and the imperative need for good governance which is the umbrella under which economic policy instruments are called to operate.Mediterranean union; macroeconomics; global crisis;

Voting Power in the EU Council of Ministers and Fair Decision Making in Distributive Politics

We analyze and evaluate the different decision rules describing the Council of Ministers of the EU starting from 1958 up to date. All the existing studies use the Banzhaf index (for binary voting) or the Shapley-Shubik index (for distributive politics). We argue that the nucleolus can be considered an appropriate power measure in distributive situations and an alternative to the Shapley-Shubik index. We then calculate the nucleolus and compare the results of our calculations with the conventional measures. In the second part, we analyze the power of the European citizens as measured by the nucleolus under the egalitarian criterion proposed by Felsenthal and Machover (1998), and characterize the first best situation. Based on these results we propose a methodology for the design of the optimal (fair) decision rules. We perform the optimization exercise for the earlier stages of the EU within a restricted domain of voting rules, and conclude that Germany should receive more than the other three large countries under the optimal voting rule.