Moonlighting politicians: A survey and research agenda

Elected representatives in many countries are legally allowed to carry out (un)paid jobs in addition to their political mandate, often referred to as moonlighting. Despite the important selection and incentive effects such outside positions might engender, academic studies evaluating the prevalence, desirability and/or consequences of politicians' moonlighting have remained relatively scarce; often due to severe data restrictions. In recent years, however, more stringent disclosure rules have increased data availability, and large-sample analyses are becoming increasingly feasible. Besides surveying recent empirical contributions to this developing research field, this paper also outlines unresolved issues and thereby develops an agenda for future enquiry. --Moonlighting,outside interests,outside income,shirking,disclosure rules

Moonlighting politicians: a survey and research agenda

This is the authors’ accepted and refereed manuscript to the articleElected representatives in many countries are legally allowed to carry out (un)paid jobs in addition to their political mandate, often referred to as ‘moonlighting’. Despite the important selection and incentive effects such outside positions might engender, academic studies evaluating the prevalence, desirability and/or consequences of politicians’ moonlighting have remained relatively scarce; often due to severe data restrictions. In recent years, however, more stringent disclosure rules have increased data availability, and large-sample analyses are becoming increasingly feasible. Besides surveying recent empirical contributions to this developing research field, this paper also outlines unresolved issues and thereby develops an agenda for future enquiry.2014-07-0

Homo Oeconomicus im Treibhaus Erde: Umweltpolitische Herausforderungen aus polit-ökonomischer Perspektive

This paper draws attention to three challenges for environmental policy that are rather neglected and only rudimentary addressed in the current discourse on the topic of climate protection and environmental protection. Section 2 discusses how "fake news" poses a problem for environmental policy. Section 3 addresses the question of how to deal with the existing "knowing-doing gaps" in some environmental policy contexts. Finally, Section 4 highlights the difficulties of a global and fair environmental policy. These challenges are considered from a politico-economic perspective, more specifically, through the lens of Public Choice Theory/New Political Economy

Homo Oeconomicus im Treibhaus Erde: Umweltpolitische Herausforderungen aus polit-ökonomischer Perspektive

This paper draws attention to three challenges for environmental policy that are rather neglected and only rudimentary addressed in the current discourse on the topic of climate protection and environmental protection. Section 2 discusses how "fake news" poses a problem for environmental policy. Section 3 addresses the question of how to deal with the existing "knowing-doing gaps" in some environmental policy contexts. Finally, Section 4 highlights the difficulties of a global and fair environmental policy. These challenges are considered from a politico-economic perspective, more specifically, through the lens of Public Choice Theory/New Political Economy

Governance im Politikfeld Wirtschaftspolitik

This paper gives an overview of the topic "economic governance". This term is used in economics and neighboring social sciences as a generic term under which usually all activities are subsumed that are conducted by economic policymakers to 'steer' or 'control' the economic system, individual markets therein or certain economic actors (e.g., businesses, consumers). In addition to a more detailed clarification of the concept of "economic governance" and the presentation of actors and instruments of economic governance, the paper discusses why and in what situations economic governance is necessary. The latter issue is the subject of a continuing debate in politics, the public and the social sciences

Fußballspiele, Polizeieinsätze und Steuerzahler: Ökonomische Anmerkungen zur Polizeikosten-Debatte

This paper examines the question of whether it is justified from an economic perspective that in Germany the general taxpayer has to finance the costs of police operations on match days of the professional football leagues. Although this question has been the subject of an ongoing discussion in politics and the public as well as in the legal literature, this issue has been relatively rarely analyzed in the economic literature. The presented economic analysis, in which the main arguments of the defenders of a socialization of police costs (esp., football clubs and their associations) are scrutinized, comes to the conclusion that under certain conditions the event organizers have to contribute to the police costs; so far, in Germany this is only the case for so-called "high-risk games" in the federal state of Bremen

Governing Public-Private Partnerships: The Problem of Low-Cost Decisions

In many cases, the expected efficiency advantages of public-private partnership (PPP) projects as a specific form of infrastructure provision did not materialize ex post. From a Public Choice perspective, one simple explanation for many of the problems surrounding the governance of PPPs is that the public decision-makers being involved in the process of initiating and implementing PPP projects (namely, politicians and public bureaucrats) in many situations make low-cost decisions in the sense of Kirchgässner. That is, their decisions may have a high impact on the wealth of the jurisdiction in which the PPP is located (most notably, on the welfare of citizen-taxpayers in this jurisdiction) but, at the same time, these decisions often only have a low impact on the private welfare of the individual decision-makers in politics and bureaucracies. The latter, for example, in many settings often have a low economic incentive to monitor/control what the private sector partners are doing (or not doing) within a PPP arrangement. The purpose of this paper is to draw greater attention to the problems created by low-cost decisions for the governance of PPPs. Moreover, the paper discusses potential remedies arising from the viewpoint of Public Choice and constitutional political economy

The retreat of the state from entrepreneurial activities: an extended survey

There is a huge body of literature in the social sciences that deals with the privatization of public enterprises in developed OECD countries after World War II. In the first part of this article, we present and critically examine empirical findings of comparative inquiries on the factors influencing cross-national differences in privatization efforts across the OECD world. Although these empirical studies provide valuable and interesting evidence, it turns out that these studies are incomplete insofar, as they mostly focus just on one dimension of privatization: the monetary or ‘material’ aspect typically measured with privatization proceeds raised by governments. Against this background, in the second part of this paper we point out that there are also formal privatization (i.e., ‘privatizing’ the legal form of a public enterprise) and functional privatization (i.e., contracting out public service production). Moreover it is emphasized that privatization does not automatically imply a retreat of the state from entrepreneurial activities. From there we plead for taking into account the development of regulatory policies and public subsidies to private enterprises over time as well, in order to get a more comprehensive picture of the development of the entrepreneurial state in the OECD world. Therefore, for each of these dimensions of entrepreneurial activity the current ‘state of the art’ regarding theory and empirics is surveyed and enriched by own empirical data. -- Dieser Aufsatz zieht eine Zwischenbilanz des Rückzugs des Staates aus unternehmerischen Tätigkeiten in der OECD-Welt seit 1980. Der Beitrag präsentiert einen kritischen Überblick über empirische Studien zu den Bestimmungsfaktoren der nationalen Unterschiede in den Bereichen Privatisierung, Subventionszahlungen und Regulierung. Es wird gezeigt, dass erhebliche Forschungslücken bestehen; abschließend werden Wege für die künftige Forschung skizziert, um zu einem umfassenderen Bild der Entwicklung des unternehmerisch tätigen Staates zu gelangen.

Männer-Domäne: weibliche Abgeordnete haben weniger Nebenjobs

"Das Geschlecht eines Bewerbers oder Angestellten im Privatsektor beeinflusst Einstellungs- und Beförderungsentscheidungen sowie die Gehaltshöhe. Die Analyse von 197 weiblichen und 417 männlichen Mitgliedern des Deutschen Bundestages (Oktober 2005 bis September 2007) zeigt, dass das Geschlecht von Politikern auch die Wahrscheinlichkeit von Nebentätigkeiten beeinflusst. Dies deutet darauf hin, dass Gender selbst dann noch eine Rolle in Einstellungsprozessen spielt, wenn der Personalpool in einem stark politisierten Umfeld arbeitet und durch Wahlen (in denen Gender oft eine bedeutende Rolle spielt) bereits einer Vorauswahl unterworfen war." (Autorenreferat)"Private-sector hiring and promotion decisions as well as wage levels are often found to be affected by the gender of the applicant or employee. An analysis of 197 female and 417 male German Members of Parliament over the period October 2005 to September 2007 implies that a politician’s gender affects the probability of having extra-parliamentary activities. This suggests that gender continues to play a role in employment processes even when the recruitment pool is set in a strongly politicised environment and is 'pre-selected' via elections (where again gender often plays a prominent role)." (author's abstract

Delegation, accountability and legislator moonlighting: agency problems in Germany

Members of parliament in many countries are legally permitted to execute (un)paid jobs in addition to their political mandate. It is often argued that such ‘moonlighting’ activities are unproblematic for the chain of democratic delegation and accountability as long as outside interests/earnings are disclosed to citizen-principals; the latter may then sanction (perceived) misconduct through the ballot box. Using principal-agent theory as an analytical framework and the German national parliament as a case study, this paper discusses why the accountability mechanisms of moonlighting disclosure and electoral control are often impaired in practice. We also illustrate that these concerns generalise beyond the German setting