Efficiency of Fairness in Voting Systems

Fair representation of voters in a committee representing different voters’ groups is being broadly discussed during last few years. Assuming we know what the fair representation is, there exists a problem of optimal quota: given a “fair” distribution of voting weights, how to set up voting rule (quota) in such a way that distribution of relative a priori voting power is as close as possible to distribution of relative voting weights. Together with optimal quota problem a problem of trade-off between fairness and efficiency (ability of a voting body to change status quo) is formalized by a fairness-efficiency matrix.Committee system, efficiency, fairness, fairness-efficiency matrix, indirect voting power, optimal quota, power indices, voting system

Economic Research in the Czech Republic: Entering International Academic Market

Paper provides a short characteristic of publication outputs of the economists in the Czech Republic during eight years (1993-2000) and presents the project of evaluation of research performance of the Czech economics departments based on records in international databases.citation index; economic research; international databases; research performance

Duality of Power in the European Parliament

Increasing number of studies is focusing attention to constitutional analysis of European Union institutions and distribution of intra-institutional and inter-institutional influence in the European Union decision making. Most of the studies are related to distribution of voting power in the EU Council of Ministers as reflecting the influence of member states (or, more precisely, member states governments). Significantly less attention is paid to the analysis of European Parliament (EP). In this paper we address the following question: Taking as decisional units national chapters of European political parties, is there a difference between a priori voting power of national groups in the case of “national” coordination of voting and in the case of “partisan” coordination of voting? By coordination of voting we mean two step process: in the first step there is an internal voting in the groups of units (national or partisan), in the second step there is a voting of aggregated groups (European political parties or national representations) in the EP. In the both cases the voting has an ideological dimension (elementary unit is a party), difference is only in dimension of aggregation. Power indices methodology is used to evaluate voting power of national party groups in the cases of partisan and national coordination of voting behaviour.a priori voting power, European Parliament, European political parties, power indices, Shapley-Shubik power index

How much of Federalism in the European Union

The European Union (EU) is not de jure a federation, but after 50 years of institutional evolution it possesses attributes of a federal state. One can conclude that EU is “something between” federation and intergovernmental organization. If we measure “something between” by interval [0, 1], where 0 means fully intergovernmental organization and 1 means de facto federation, the questions are: What is the location of recent EU on this interval? What tendency of development of this location can be observed in time? In this paper we propose such a measure based on game-theoretical model of European Union decision making system.Co-decision procedure, committee system, consultation procedure, European Union decision making, federation, intergovernmental organization, qualified majority, power indices, simple voting committee

Fairness and Squareness: Fair Decision Making Rules in the EU Council?

The concept of fair representation of voters in a committee representing different voters’ groups, such as national representations in union of states, is discussed. This concept, introduced into discussion about voting rights in the Council of European Union in 2004, was narrowed to proposal of distribution of voting weights among the member states proportionally to square roots of population. Such a distribution should guarantee the same indirect voting power to each EU citizen, measured by Penrose-Banzhaf index of voting power. In this paper we attempt to clarify this concept.Council of Ministers, indirect voting power, Penrose-Banzhaf power index, Shapley-Shubik power index, square root rule, simple voting game

Publication Portfolio of the Czech Economists and Problems of Rankings

This paper presents "micro" results of empirical analysis of 1235 individual publication records of 1300 economists in the Czech Republic retrieved from international databases Web of Science and EconLit for the period 1994-2003. Publication portfolio described by research publication flows from particular institutions to particular journals is provided. Algorithms of weighted and notweighted rankings of institutions by research performance are proposed and applied on Czech data.impact factor; lexicographic ordering; publication portfolio; ranking

National, Political and Institutional Influence in European Union Decision Making

The distribution of decisional power among member states of the EU has remained a hot issue in recent discussions about the future design of European Union decision making and the Lisbon revision of the unsuccessful proposal of the Constitutional Treaty. Usually only the distribution of voting weights in the Council of Ministers under the qualified majority voting rule is taken into account. In contrast, in this paper we formulate simplified models of the consultation and co-decision procedures in the decision making of European Union institutions, reflecting the fact that together with the Council of Ministers the Commission and European Parliament are also important actors in EU decision making. The main conclusion of this paper is that the distribution of voting power in the Council of Ministers voting record provides incomplete evidence about national influences in European Union decision making. With rare exceptions decision making is based on the consultation and co-decision procedures involvi ng the Commission and/or European Parliament. Legislative procedures change the inter-institutional distribution of power (among the Council, Commission and European Parliament) reducing the power of the Council and at the same time they change intra-institutional power in the Council (the relative power of the Member States compared to the Council voting without taking into account the Commission and Parliament).Co-decision procedure, committee system, consultation procedure, European Union decision making, Penrose-Banzhaf power indices, qualified majority, simple voting committee, weighted majority game

Arithmetic of Property Rights: A Leontief-type Model of Ownership Structures

A simple algebraic model of a property structure leading to the Leontief-type input-output scheme is developed and used to eliminate indirect ownership relations and evaluate the final distribution of national property among individual owners. Concepts of "family capitalism" and "capitalism of agents" type of corporate governance are defined and compared. Implications of different designs of corporate governance for general equilibrium theory, profit distribution and decision making are discussed.Corporate governance; Leontief input-output model; ownership structure; primary owners; principal-agent problem; secondary owners

Česká ekonomická věda na mezinárodním akademickém trhu: měření vědeckého kapitálu vysokoškolských a dalších výzkumných pracovišť [available in Czech only]

Paper presents methodology of evaluation of research capital of the Czech economics departments and research institutions measured by publication and citation records in international databases, weighted with taking into account impact factors of journals. First partial results of evaluation are included.citation; impact factor; publication; ranking; research capital

Institutional Research Capital and Individual Performance of Economists in the CR (in Czech)

This paper presents methodology and results of a methodological evaluation of the research capital of Czech economics departments and research institutions, and of the research performance of individual economists in the Czech Republic, as measured by publication history and citation records in international databases, and weighted using so-called journal's impact factors.citation, impact factor, publication, ranking, research capital