Publications
"Optimal Committee Design and Political
Participation"
(Journal of Theoretical Politics, published online before print, doi: 10.1177/0951629812470557)
Abstract: Building on a Condorcetian common values framework, this paper tackles
the question of optimal committee formation within a community of finite size.
Solving for the Bayesian information aggregation game yields some interesting normative
results that emphasize i) the presence of informational externalities as root causes of
suboptimally low voluntary participation levels in communal decision-making and ii) the
Pareto-enhancing nature of drafting vis-à-vis decentralized mechanisms of self-selection.
I, first, derive the optimal size of a committee based on the assumption of informative
voting and, then, I show that this is a globally optimal solution to the dual optimization
problem of optimal committee design. I, subsequently, compare it to the various symmetric
equilibria that may arise in a complete information setting or a Bayesian environment with
heterogeneous private costs. I finally sketch out an optimal transfer scheme that can ex ante
implement the socially efficient committee size.
"Military Conscription, Foreign Policy, and Income Inequality: The Missing Link"
(2011, LSE PSPE Working Paper No. 2)
Abstract: This paper seeks to analyze the political economy of military conscription policy and its
relationship with a country's foreign policy outlook (hawkish or dovish). National security
is modeled as a non-rivalrous and non-excludable public good, whose production technology
consists of either centrally conscripted or competitively recruited labor. Conscription is
construed as an 'implicit' discretionary tax on citizens' labor endowment. Based on this,
I propose a simple political economy model of pure public goods provision financed by two
policy instruments: a lump-sum income and a conscription tax. Constraint optimization
of a quasi-linear utility function subject to labor market clearing and budget balancing
gives rise to three general classes of preferences: high and low-skilled citizens will prefer an
all-professional army, albeit of different size, while medium-skilled citizens favor positive
levels of conscription. I further tease out the relationship between conscription policy and
the level of external threat to a country, its political regime, and its pre-tax inequality levels.
"The Political Economy of Resource Rent Distribution"
(2009, IBEI Working Paper No. 19)
Abstract: I model the link between political regime and level of diversification following
a windfall of natural resource revenues. The explanatory variables I make use of are the political
support functions embedded within each type of regime and the disparate levels of discretion,
openness, transparency, and accountability of government. I show that a democratic government
seeks to maximize the long-term consumption path of the representative consumer, in order to
maximize its chances of re-election, while an authoritarian government, in the absence of any
electoral mechanism of accountability, seeks to buy off and entrench a group of special interests
loyal to the government and potent enough to ensure its short-term survival. Essentially the
contrast in the approaches towards resource rent distribution comes down to a variation in political
weights on aggregate welfare and rentierist special interests endogenized by distinct political support functions.
"Gradualism and Uncertainty in International Union
Formation: The European Community’s First Enlargement"
(2008, Review of International Organizations, 3)
Abstract: This paper introduces a new theoretical framework of international unions
qua coalitions of countries adopting a common policy and common supranational
institutions. I make use of a three-country spatial bargaining game of coalition
formation, in order to examine the endogenous strategic considerations in the
creation and enlargement of international unions. Why would we observe a
gradualist approach in the formation of the grand coalition even if the latter is
assumed to be weakly efficient? I propose asymmetric information about the benefits
of integration as a mechanism that can generate gradual union formation in
equilibrium. As it turns out, it may well be in the ‘core’ countries’ interest to delay
the accession of a third, ‘peripheral’ country in order to (1) stack the institutional
make-up of the initial union in their favor and (2) signal their high resolve to wait
out the expansion of their bilateral subunion. A related case from the European
experience provides an interesting illustration.
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Working Papers
"Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Incentives for Reform: An Informational Mechanism of EU Conditionality"
Abstract: How does the prospect of EU accession affect candidate members' incentives
to implement political and economic reforms? On the flip side of the question, how does the
threat of expulsion from a union affect a member-state government's political will for
compliance with existing policy standards and criteria? To answer these questions, we
propose an informational mechanism of EU conditionality drawing on Bénabou and Tirole's
(2003) formalization of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. In a Bayesian game of
enlargement between a principal (EU Commission) and an agent (candidate-member government),
we fi
nd that the extrinsic bonus of post-accession transfers may, on one hand,
reinforce short-term incentives to satisfy membership criteria, yet, at the same time, it
will increase moral hazard by 'crowding out' the agents intrinsic motivation to liberalize
in the long-term. As a result, we expect that i) net-recipient countries' post-accession pace
of reform will decline over time, ii) the 'crowding-out' effect will be stronger for countries
that enjoy higher levels of net transfers, and iii) 'early liberalizers' are ex ante more likely
to accept the conditionality package and implement the necessary reforms for accession. We
corroborate our predictions with anecdotal evidence and case studies from the EU's Eastern
enlargement and the Eurozone's debt crisis.
"Military Manpower Systems and Economic Inequality: An Empirical Model Revisited 1950-2005"
Abstract: Military conscription is one of the constitutive policy bargains of the modern
state. From a political economy perspective taxation and conscription may be viewed as
substitutable instruments of foreign and defense policy. Existing empirical studies focus
mostly on the ‘political’ causal link from the choice of military manpower systems (conscript
vs. professional) to defense policy as is primarily expressed by the projection of ‘hard’
military force. We, on the other hand, use a time-series cross-section (TSCS) original
data set (1950-2005 state-years) to test the ‘economic’ causal link from economic (and political)
inequality to the choice of military manpower system. We find that more egalitarian societies
will tend to conscript at a higher rate. We manage to capture the richness of cross-country
and cross-time variation in types of military organization by using both effective and statutory
continuous measures of military conscription, in order to control for the discrepancy between
legally enacted and effectively enforced levels of conscription. Panel-corrected standard errors
and distributed lags are estimated to correct for temporal dependence, policy inertia, and other
identification concerns.
"International Treaty Ratification and Party Competition: Theory and Evidence from the EU's Constitutional Treaty" with Andreas Dür
Abstract: What explains a party's dual decision to endorse or not endorse a referendum on
an international treaty and to support or oppose that treaty in a referendum campaign?
Treating referendums as second-order elections with an uncertain outcome
we propose a probabilistic game of electoral competition between government and
opposition, wherefrom we derive a number of hypotheses regarding the impact of
timing, public opinion, and political capital. Data on the position of 175 parties in 24
member states of the European Union (EU) on the appropriate rati cation instrument
for the EU's Constitutional Treaty and their substantive position with respect
to the Treaty itself allow us to test these expectations against empirical evidence.
The results of a multinomial logistic regression model provide solid support for our
theoretical reasoning.
"On the Political Geometry of International
Unions: A Coalition-Theoretic Approach"
Abstract: This paper examines the endogenous strategic considerations in simultaneously creat-
ing, enlarging, and deepening an international union of countries within a framework of
variable geometry. We introduce a coalition-theoretic model to examine the equilibrium
relationship between union size and scope. What is the equilibrium (stable) size and scope
of an international union and how do these variables interact? When should we expect
countries to take advantage of more flexible modes of integration and how does that possibility
affect the pace and depth of integration? In tackling these questions, we characterize
the various policy areas of cooperation with respect to their cross-country and cross-policy
spillovers, their efficiency scales, the heterogeneity of preferences, and the general cost
structure. We then go on to show that the enlargement of a union and the widening
of its policy scope are too symbiotic and mutually reinforcing dynamic processes under
certain conditions. This is an exciting research puzzle given that current game-theoretic
predictions have been at odds with the empirical reality of European integration.
"An Empirical Model of
Sequential Strategic Voting"
Abstract: Based on the results of a game-theoretic model by Meirowitz and Tucker (2003), this
paper develops an empirical model of sequential strategic voting in the context of
consecutive elections of unequal institutional importance (first- vs. second-order
elections). The main hypothesis emerging from the theoretical model’s predictions
consists of a curvilinear effect of the time elapsed between any two consecutive
asymmetric elections on the degree of vote share congruence both at the party and the
country level. Drawing on cross-European electoral data inclusive of elections for the
European Parliament, we do find a significant non-linear effect as evidence of strategic
voting using both parametric and non-parametric regression methods. As it turns out,
the effect is more prevalent among incumbent parties.
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