Curbing Power or Progress? Governing with an Opposition Veto

Veto institutions are often dominated by government opponents with rival electoral and policy interests (e.g. \divided government"). I investigate the tradeoff between policy control and policy blockade when both the government and the veto party may cater to opposing special interests. The value of an opposition veto depends on whether electoral accountability can discipline bad type politicians. When this is not the case, a veto is beneficial only if the government's special interests are expected to be harmful. In contrast, when bad types care about (re-)election, a veto always increases expected welfare, providing a new rationale for the frequent occurrence of "divided government". Without policy rivalry, an opposition veto fares even better.Political Accountability, Opposition, Veto, Divided Government

Indexation Of Unemployment Benefits To Previous Earnings, Employment And Wages

In most OECD countries, unemployment benefits are tied to individual previous labor earnings. We study the progressivity of this indexation with regard to its effects on employment, output and wages in four equilibrinin models of the labor market keeping the level of unemployment benefits fixed. In the two cases of competitive labor markets and decentralized wage bargaining, employment and output increase, while wages decrease with the degree of indexation. In the model with search unemployment and Nash wage bargaining, all wages, employment and output increase, while die indexation of employirient benefits to previous carnings has no effect in the case of efficiency wages. In addition, our results suggest that a more progressive mdexation of unemployment benefits to labor earnings is wellare enhancing.Unemployment Benefits ; Progressive Indexation ; Union Wage-Setting ; Search Unemployment ; Efficiency Wages

Coordination under the Shadow of Career Concerns

To innovate, employees need to develop novel ideas and coordinate with each other to turn these ideas into better products and services. Work outcomes provide signals about employees' abilities to the labor market, and therefore career concerns arise. These can both be 'good' (enhancing incentives for effort in developing ideas) and 'bad' (preventing voluntary coordination). Our model shows how the firm designs its explicit incentive system and organizes work processes to take these conflicting forces into account. The comparative statics results suggest a link between the increased use of teams and recent changes in labor market returns to skills.career concerns, group incentives, knowledge work, reputation, teams

Curbing Power or Progress? Governing with an Opposition Veto

Veto institutions are often dominated by government opponents with rival electoral and policy interests (e.g. \divided government"). I investigate the tradeoff between policy control and policy blockade when both the government and the veto party may cater to opposing special interests. The value of an opposition veto depends on whether electoral accountability can discipline bad type politicians. When this is not the case, a veto is beneficial only if the government's special interests are expected to be harmful. In contrast, when bad types care about (re-)election, a veto always increases expected welfare, providing a new rationale for the frequent occurrence of "divided government". Without policy rivalry, an opposition veto fares even better

An experimental test of career concerns

Holmström’s (1982/99) career concerns model has become an important workhorse for the analysis of agency issues in many fields. The underlying signal jamming argument requires players to use information in a Bayesian way – which may or may not reasonably approximate real-life decision makers’ behavior. Testing this theory with field data is difficult since typically little is known about the information that individuals base their decisions on, and this explains the dearth of empirical studies. We provide experimental evidence that the signal jamming mechanism works in a laboratory setting. Moreover, subjects’ beliefs fit remarkably well requirements imposed by the Bayesian equilibrium concept.incentives, reputation, career concerns, signal jamming, experiments

Indexation Of Unemployment Benefits To Previous Earnings, Employment And Wages

In most OECD countries, unemployment benefits are tied to individual previous labor earnings. We study the progressivity of this indexation with regard to its effects on employment, output and wages in four equilibrinin models of the labor market keeping the level of unemployment benefits fixed. In the two cases of competitive labor markets and decentralized wage bargaining, employment and output increase, while wages decrease with the degree of indexation. In the model with search unemployment and Nash wage bargaining, all wages, employment and output increase, while die indexation of employirient benefits to previous carnings has no effect in the case of efficiency wages. In addition, our results suggest that a more progressive mdexation of unemployment benefits to labor earnings is wellare enhancing

Indexation Of Unemployment Benefits To Previous Earnings, Employment And Wages

In most OECD countries, unemployment benefits are tied to individual previous labor earnings. We study the progressivity of this indexation with regard to its effects on employment, output and wages in four equilibrinin models of the labor market keeping the level of unemployment benefits fixed. In the two cases of competitive labor markets and decentralized wage bargaining, employment and output increase, while wages decrease with the degree of indexation. In the model with search unemployment and Nash wage bargaining, all wages, employment and output increase, while die indexation of employirient benefits to previous carnings has no effect in the case of efficiency wages. In addition, our results suggest that a more progressive mdexation of unemployment benefits to labor earnings is wellare enhancing

Career concerns incentives: an experimental test

Holmström's (1982/99) career concerns model has become a workhorse for analyzing agency issues in many elds. The underlying signal jamming argument requires players to use information in a Bayesian way, which is difficult to directly test with eld data: typically little is known about the information that individuals base their decisions on. Our laboratory experiment provides prima facie evidence: i) the signal jamming mechanism successfully creates incentives on the labor supply side; ii) decision errors take time to decrease; iii) while subjects' average beliefs are remarkably consistent with play, a mild winner's curse arises on the labor demand side

Political and Judicial Checks on Corruption: Evidence from American State Governments

The paper investigates the effects of checks and balances on corruption. Within a presidential system, effective separation of powers is achieved under divided government, with the executive and legislative branches being controlled by different political parties. When government is unified, no effective separation exists even within a presidential system, but, we argue, can be partially restored by having an accountable judiciary. Our empirical findings show that divided government and elected, rather than appointed, state supreme court judges are associated with lower corruption and, furthermore, that the effect of an accountable judiciary is stronger under unified government, where government cannot control itself. The effect of an accountable judiciary seems to be driven primarily by judges chosen through direct elections, rather than those exposed to a retention vote following appointment