Determinants of direct democracy across Europe

Dipartimento di Politiche Pubbliche e Scelte Collettive – POLIS
Department of Public Policy and Public Choice – POLIS
Working paper n. 72
March 2006
Determinants of direct democracy
across Europe
Nadia Fiorino and Roberto Ricciuti
UNIVERSITA’ DEL PIEMONTE ORIENTALE “Amedeo Avogadro” ALESSANDRIA
Determinants of Direct Democracy across Europe*
Nadia Fiorino
Roberto Ricciuti
University of L’Aquila
University of Florence
ABSTRACT
This paper investigates on the demographic, economic, political and cultural determinants of direct
democracy in European States using an index of citizen law-making for 43 countries. The test is
interesting since there are important variations across European countries in the referendum and initiative
use. We find that per capita income, population and ethnic fractionalization are poor determinants of
direct democracy, while majoritarian elections and presidential systems are in general negatively related
to direct democracy. A larger share of Catholic population is a positive determinant, whereas Muslims
have a negative effect. Quality of governance indicators have a positive effect.
Keywords: direct democracy, comparative politics, Europe, referendum.
JEL codes:
* We wish to thank seminar participants at the universities of Florence and Eastern Piedmont for useful comments.
1. Introduction
The debate on direct democracy has been in the political science and public choice literature
for long time. In recent years scholars have triggered several theoretical and empirical studies that
essentially discuss: 1) the competence of the voters; 2) the role the special interest groups that can
fund election campaigns may have to subvert public policy process; 3) the how direct democracy
affects policy; 4) the how direct democracy influences economic performance.
This paper departs from these strands of literature by presenting and empirically evaluating a
number of economic, demographic, political and cultural determinants of direct democracy.
Specifically, we investigate on the impact of these elements on a unique dataset of country index on
citizen law making in European countries. The definition of Europe used here is larger than the one
we are used to: it amounts to 43 countries, which include most of the countries that emerged from
the break-up of the USSR.
We do not dwell on legal and institutional details; however, it is useful to define a few terms
and provide a little institutional context before proceeding. Direct democracy is a broad term that
encompasses a variety of decision processes, including town meetings, recall elections, initiatives,
and various forms of referendums. This paper focuses on the two most important and widely used
processes, the initiative and referendum. The right of initiative is the right of citizens to put an issue
onto the political agenda of a polity. The referendum is a ballot vote on a law already approved by
the legislature, also qualified for the ballot by collecting a predetermined number of signatures. In
both cases citizens are involved, by registering or signing an initiative and by taking part in the final
decision-making in a referendum.1
The rest of the paper proceeds as follows: Section 2 reviews the literature. In section 3 we
present the methodology to construct the Country Index on Citizen Law-Making which is the
indicator we use to measure direct democracy. Section 4 describes the data and specifies the
1
There is some inconsistency in terminology from both substantive and formal point of view. Referendum is sometimes
used as a broad term for all ballot propositions and sometimes for the particular process of challenging a government
law by petition. Furthermore, we use referendums instead of referenda according to the recent literature.
1
variables used for the empirical analysis. We then present the main results in Section 5. Section 6
concludes.
2. Literature review
Theoretical and empirical literature on the impact of economic, political and demographic
conditions on the extent of democracy is not well developed. A few number of theoretical models
has been developed on the effect of cultural conditions on democracy (Huntington, 1991; Putnam,
1993; Landes, 1998). These studies typically use the religious affiliation as a proxy for the
“dimension” of the culture (i.e. ethic, tolerance, trust), yet they do not investigate on democracy as
an univocal concept, they rather refer to democracy as a government performance. Putnam (1993)
analyzes the effect of public good provision, while Landes is concerned with the flow of people,
goods and ideas between countries. Furthermore, many cultural explanations of democratic
institutions and policies have a political element to them, as Landes’s emphasis on the use of
intolerance for political ends makes clear.
The empirical literature on direct democracy has focused on two issues: the relationship
between initiatives and referendums on government spending, and the impact of direct democracy
institutions on economic performance. In both cases the object of the analysis are Switzerland and
the US states.
In the first strand of literature Matsusaka (1995) points out that there are three reasons why
state initiatives improve resource allocation. First, the possibility of vote trading between legislators
for sub-optimal projects is reduced by the threat of direct legislation. Second, the removal of agenda
control by the legislature allows projects closer to the preferences of the median voter to appear on
the ballot. Third, problems of imperfect information which may lead either to well-intentioned
representatives implementing undesirable policies or to legislative shirking are reduced when the
public votes directly on legislation. Matsusaka analyzes the impact of initiatives over a 30-year
period and concludes that initiatives are used to reduce tax burdens as well as to reduce overall state
2
and local government spending. The results indicate that voters are moving away from fiscal
policies that are redistributive and moving towards policies that are more closely tied to economic
activity. Feld and Matsusaka (2003) find that that government spending is lower in Swiss cantons
with mandatory referendums. The effect of these referendums on spending is larger as the spending
thresholds fall and as initiatives become more costly for voters to use. The magnitudes are
remarkably large, implying 19 percent lower spending for a mandatory referendum with the median
spending threshold and initiative signature requirement.2
Moving to the second strand of literature, Feld and Savioz (1997) compare the economic
performance of Swiss cantons that have direct democracy to cantons without direct democracy.
They find that cantons with initiatives have 5.4% higher output in the period 1984-1993 and almost
17% higher output in 1990. It should be noted that no theoretical reason is given for this result.
Blomberg et al. (2004) constructed a growth model in which initiatives can play an important role
in determining the resource allocation of public capital and found that initiatives can lead state
economies closer to their optimal allocations. Testing the implications of this model using U.S.
state-level data from 1969 to 1986, they find that states with initiatives waste about 20-30% fewer
resources and converge to their steady states about a third faster than do non-initiative states.
Our paper relates to the empirical literature that has analysed the relationship running from
growth to democracy. The benchmark in this field is Barro (1999). Barro analyzes a panel of 100
countries from 1960 to 1995 and tests the relationship between economic development and the
country’s propensity to experience democracy which is measured using both a subjective indicator
of electoral rights compiled by Gastil (various years) and his followers from 1972 to 1995 and a
related variable by Bollen (1990) from 1960 to 1965. The author also considers other possible
determinants of democracy, many of which have been proposed in the political science. The results
of the model show that higher standard of living promotes democracy. Specifically, democracy
increases with per capita GDP, primary schooling and more equal educational opportunity across
2
Feld and Kirchgassner (2001) find that debt referendums reduce borrowing and spending in Swiss municipalities, and
Bohn and Inman (1996) get that they restrict borrowing in U.S. states.
3
the sexes (smaller gap between male and female primary attainment). A significant and negative
relation relates democracy to the Muslim variable, even when the measures of standard of living
and the other explanatory variables are held constant. Furthermore, for a given standard of living,
democracy tends to fall with the urbanization, while rises with the middle-class share of income.
Recently, Matsusaka (2005) in reviewing the existing theory on the changes that direct
democracy may have on public policy, affirms that demographic and technological trends are
stimulating an unprecedented growth in popular decision-making across the world. The rising
education among the population and the falling of the information costs due to the communication
technology revolution have dramatically reduced the knowledge advantage that elected officials had
over ordinary citizens. The result of these trends is that important policy decisions are shifting from
legislatures to the people by eclipsing legislatures in setting policy agenda. Matsusaka bases such
assertion by simply reporting data on the growing amount of higher education in the American
population; yet he do not provide any statistical test for this claim, as he focus on the review of the
literature about the initiative and the referendum to highlight some key issues for the future.
3. An index of direct democracy
As a measure of direct democracy we use the Country Index on Citizen Law-Making
(CICLM) calculated by the Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe (Kaufmann, 2004). This
index is a unique measure of the quality of direct democracy and its performance by applying the
procedures the country’s political system provides in order to proposing, approving, amending and
deleting laws through popular initiative and referendums. Specifically, CICLM is based on the
procedural elements that contribute to measure the quality of direct democracy and its performance.
Such elements are distinguished in fundamental, essential, important and useful. The fundamental
elements take into account the exclusions on issues from initiative and referendums; entry hurdles
(such as the number of signatures that need to be collected); time limits to collect signatures;
4
majority requirements or quorums for the validity of the vote, and the way in which signatures are
collected.
The essential elements include the role of the parliament either to discuss referendum issues
and recommend a decision to the citizens or to have the right to put a counter-proposal on the ballot;
the presence or the absence of an independent authority in charge of the supervision process. The
important elements apply essentially the periods of time the government, the parliament and the
electorate have at their disposal to deal with an initiative or a referendum proposal. Finally, the
useful elements encompass a possible support for the work of the initiative group by the
administration and a democratic and openly communicative infrastructure in the community (such
as free and central places of assembly; political infrastructure open to all; free advertising space in
newspapers, on radio and television or public spaces).
On the background of these elements and of the historical record,3 a country-rating into seven
categories is provided for 43 European countries.4 Each country is classified as: 1) radical
democrat; 2) progressive; 3) cautious; 4) hesitant; 5) fearful; 6) beginner and, finally, 7)
authoritarian. For the ease of exposition, in Table 1 we have assigned a number in the 1 to 7 scale
for each category, with 7 being the country rated as radical democrat, and 1 countries with the
lowest level of direct democracy. The only country ranked 7 is Switzerland, then there are 7
countries ranked 6. The largest group (15) is made of countries ranked 5, while 8 are classed 4, 4
are ranked 3, 7 are classed 2, and 5 are ranked 1. In the estimation we have converted this ranking
so that they lie between 0 and 1 scale, as it is common in this literature.
[Table 1 about here]
3
The index is a subjective measure of direct democracy that takes into account both the actual referendums and
initiatives and the quality of the process. Consider the case of Belarus. In this country 9 referendums have been held
from 1995 to 2004, but the country has the lowest possible score. Referendums were proposed and used by President
Lukashenko to increase its power at the expenses of the legislature, and a positive vote has been allegedly obtained by
the means of arrests of political adversaries and pressures on the population.
4
Kaufman (2004) provides also the evaluation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. However, because many economic, social and
institutional data were not available for these countries in the dataset we have used, we decided to exclude it from our
sample, because in a cross-section the software just drops the countries that have missing data.
5
We need to point out a few limitations of this index. First, it does not tell anything about
which kind of topics are called for referendums and initiatives. For example, we cannot distinguish
whether a country is more inclined to have referendums on economic or civil issues, for example.
Second, the index mixes together the legal possibility of having referendums and initiatives and the
actual choice of exercising them. Since these two circumstances belong to different characteristics
of each country (the constitution and the law, on the one hand, and parties or movements in the
political arena, on the other hand), and we cannot discriminate between them.
4. Model and data
We estimate two models. In the first we assume that all independent variables are exogenous
with respect to the index of direct democracy. We basically consider variables as population, ethnic
fractionalization and so on. In this case OLS estimates are used. In the second model we include
variables that may be endogenous to direct democracy. For example, higher corruption may
negatively affect the likelihood of a country to use initiatives and referendums because the civil
society is not endowed with instruments such free press that make it possible an open discussion on
political and economic issues. At the same time, in a country with a low CICLM index politicians
will tend to keep issues apart from the people and under-invest in social capital to avoid being more
closely scrutinised by voters reducing the room for corruption. In these cases we use instrumental
variables and two stages least squares (2SLS) to address the issue of endogeneity. In both case we
correct estimates for heteroscedasticity, to take care of fact that the democracy index takes discrete
values.
The first model is the following:
CICLM i = α 0 + α 1ECDEM i + α 2 INSTi + α 3 REL i + ε i
6
(1)
where CICLM is the variable defined in the previous Section5, ECDEM is a vector of
economic and demographic variables, INST is a vector of institutional variables, REL is a vector of
religious variables, and ε is an error term. ECDEM includes LYP, the log of GDP per capita in the
year 2000, LPOP, the log of population, and HET, which measures ethnic fractionalisation. INST
consists of two dummy variables: MAJ and PRES for majoritarian and presidential systems,
respectively. REL includes CATHO and MUSL, which are the percentages of population that are
Catholic and Muslim.
The second model has the following specification:
CICLM i = β 0 + β 1 Z i + β 2VARi + ε i
(2)
where Z is a vector of variables that were significant in the first model, and VAR is the
variable of interest that we add once at time. These variables include CORR (perception of
corruption) PRIGHTS (political rights), PROPDEF (the extent to which property rights are
protected), and GOVEFF (measuring the competence of the bureaucracy and the quality of public
service delivery).
To address endogeneity we use legal the origin of each country: British (common law),
French, German, Scandinavian (all part of the civil law tradition), and Socialist, as instruments. In a
number of papers Shleifer with his co-authors has argued that legal origins have an impact on
institutions and therefore on outcomes (Glaeser and Shleifer, 2002 provide a theoretical
interpretation of these differences). For example, legal origins affect judicial independence and this
has an effect on the protection of property rights (La Porta et al., 2004); legal origins affect the
regulation of entry and this influence corruption (Djankov et al., 2002); the quality of government
and political rights impinge on the legal origins (La Porta et al., 1999). Fig. 1 suggests that legal
origins are not correlated with direct democracy, and therefore they can be effectively used as
5
Gross and Kaufmann (2002) provided a first version of this index for 32 European countries. However, definitions and
methodologies are different and they cannot be merged to obtain a meaningful panel.
7
instruments. For the ease of reading, CICLM is multiplied by 10. Our argument is then examined
with the overidentifying restriction test.
The variable CICLM is taken from Kaufmann (2004), fractionalization is taken from Alesina
et al. (2003), institutional variables are taken from Persson and Tabellini (2003), CORR is from
Lambsdorff (2005),6 GOVEFF are from Kaufmann et al. (2005), the remaining variables are from
La Porta et al. (1999). Table 2 gives summary statistics for all the variables involved in our analysis.
A correlation matrix is given in the appendix at the end of the paper.
[Table 2 about here]
5. Empirical results
Table 3 present the results for the first model. Looking at the overall picture, we find that LYP
is positive in the first two estimates, meaning that richer countries have the resources to organise
referendums and other forms of direct democracy. However, the size of the coefficient and its
significance falls down as long as more regressors are added.7 In contrast, LPOP is usually not
significantly different from zero. We think that this is the result of two opposite driving forces. On
the one hand, smaller countries can find direct democracy more feasible (Switzerland being the
typical case). On the other hand, for bigger populations, we can also add economies of scale in
running referendums. A similar argument applies to HET: Kaufmann (2004) maintains that in a
more heterogeneous country direct democracy can build consensus on sensitive issues by uniting
different groups. However, we can also think that a larger ethnic group can exploit a minority via
referendums (developments in Iraq exemplify the two issues: via referendum on the constitution
6
In the original index 1 is given to countries with the highest perception of corruption, 10 to those with the lowest
perception. We have reversed the order to have results easier to interpret.
7
Barro (1999: S160) stated what we can call “the common wisdom” on the relationship between growth and democracy
“increases in various measures of the standard of living forecast a gradual rise in democracy. In contrast, democracies
that arise without prior economic development ...tend not to last.” Acemoglu et al. (2005) show that controlling for
factors that simultaneously affect both variables by means of country fixed effects removes the statistical association
between income per capita and democracy. Moreover, they show that the long-run evolution of income and democracy
is related to historical factors. Acemoglu et al. (2005) look for causality between income and democracy using
instrumental variables such as past savings rates and changes in the incomes of trading partners. The nature of our
dataset prevents us the use of these strategies.
8
they are trying to build a credible state power to all ethnic groups, and at the same time the Sunni
minority has been trying to reject it because it will spoil their previous position, given the alliance
between Shia and Kurds). Empirically, none of these forces prevails. As seen in the previous
discussion, small population and low fractionalization tend to go together. The insignificance of
these two variables may be led by possible correlation between them since small countries are
probably homogeneous constituency with limited diversity, and this would not call for direct
democracy to solve divisive issues. In column (3) we re-estimate the model by excluding LPOP, but
HET is still insignificant. The same happens by excluding HET and keeping LPOP.8
Adding the institutional variables MAJ and PRES does change the overall picture. We would
expect a negative effect, since the theoretical literature on presidentialism and majoritarian elections
maintains that the policy outcomes under these two systems are closer to voters’ preferences. For
example, they tend to lower government spending, which according to Matsusaka (1995) is closer
to their preferences. Therefore, there is a reduced need to make use of direct democracy. Moreover,
Persson et al. (2000) maintain that these systems make representatives and executives more
accountable to voters; therefore they cannot drift away from voters’ preferences. Both MAJ and
PRES are negative, but they become significant at the lowest level when LPOP is removed and
religious variables are added.9 Religious variables (CATHO and MUSL) have opposite effect. A
higher fraction of population with a Catholic faith significantly increases the level of direct
democracy. In contrast, the Islamic faith significantly reduces the quality of direct democracy. It
should be noted that in both cases the size of the coefficients is small. These results partially
contradict the finding by can be negative following the argument developed by Landes (1998) and
La Porta et al. (1999) that these religions tend to undermine civic virtues. The share of Protestants is
however significantly positive only in the most parsimonious specifications of the model. These
results are available upon request.
8
Details are available upon request from the authors.
Federalism may be another institutional arrangement that keeps policy choices closer to voters’ preferences. Using a
dummy variable for federal systems, we found that this variable is negative but insignificant. Details are available upon
request
9
9
We have also considered two dummy variables: FMRSOC, for countries that were socialists
before 1989, and FMRUSSR, for countries that were previously part of the USSR. This because 21
countries of our sample were previously socialist, and 10 belonged to the USSR. In some of former
USSR countries Islam is the leading religion, therefore we wished to perform a robustness test. In
column (5) the variable MUSL is affected neither in its size nor in its significance by the inclusion
of FMRUSSR. Instead, presidentialism looses its significance. In column (6) FMRSOC is also non
significant, indicating that there is no relationship between being a former socialist country and the
current level of direct democracy.
The estimated equations explain a sizable share of the variability of CICLM, with an
adjusted R2 ranging from 46% to 63%. At the same time the F-statistics always reject the null at the
1% level.
In estimating the second model, we first have to choose the variables to add in the vector Z.
We decided for the variables that in the first model appear more consistently significant, therefore
we have included MAJ, CATHO, and MUSL. As discussed above, in these 2SLS estimates we have
added legal origin dummy variables to address endogeneity. Among the British, French,
Scandinavian, German and Socialist legal origin we have chosen the first as the reference and used
the remaining four in the regressions. The results show that indicator of good governance such as
political rights, defence of property rights and government effectiveness are significant determinant
of direct democracy, whereas higher corruption leads to lower direct democracy. The estimated
equations show a high F test for joint significance of the variables, and the over-identification χ2 is
always within the boundaries of insignificance, maintaining that we cannot reject the null of
exogeneity between the instruments and the dependent variable.
6. Conclusions
In this paper we have addressed the issue of the determinants of direct democracy. In doing
so, we have exploited a newly available dataset that encompasses 43 countries belonging to an
10
enlarged Europe. We have estimated two models: the first includes only exogenous variables; the
second also includes variables that may have a reverse causality effect with direct democracy. The
first model shows that income per capita is not related to direct democracy when more variables are
included in the estimations. Demographic variables such as population and ethnic fractionalization
do not have significant effect. Institutional variables as presidentialism and majoritarian voting rules
have a negative effect, since they probably make representatives more accountable to voters,
making less compelling to appeal to referendums and initiatives. However, their significance is not
high, and depends on the specifications. More consistent results are obtained by religious variables:
an higher percentage of Catholics increases direct democracy, whereas the opposite is true for
Muslims.
When we move to possibly endogenous variables, we find that a more corrupted country is
less likely to have referendums and initiatives, with a possible issue of accountability involved in
this result. Political rights, defence of property rights, and government effectiveness are
significantly positive determinants of direct democracy,
The index we applied suffers from some limitations that future research needs to overcome.
First, we used a cross-section of countries. On the one hand, this causes a reduction in the number
of observations and degree of freedom. On the other hand, it does not allow us to follow the pattern
of the countries across time. Second, the number of countries is limited to European ones. Third, the
index does not allow us to distinguish between issues that have been asked for referendums and
initiatives. Even considering these caveats, we believe that our analysis provides useful insights on
the determinants of direct democracy, and fills a gap in a literature that has been mainly concerned
with two countries, and on the consequences of direct democracy. The construction of an index that
considers a larger number of countries for time periods of five years will overcome these issues.
11
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Journal of Economic Growth, 8, 155-194.
Blomberg, S.B., Hess, G.D., and Weerapana, A. (2004). “The Impact of Voter Initiatives on
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Feld, L.P. and Kirchgassner, G. (2001). “Does Direct Democracy Reduce Public Debt? Evidence
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Feld, L.P. and Matsusaka, J.G. (2003). “Budget Referendums and Government Spending: Evidence
from Swiss Cantons”, Journal of Public Economics, 87, 2703-2724.
Feld, L. P. and Savioz, M. R. (1997). “Direct Democracy Matters for Economic Performance: An
Empirical Investigation”, Kyklos, 50, 507–38.
Gastil, R.D. (various years). Freedom in the world. Westport Conn.: Greenwood.
Glaeser, E.L and Shleifer, A. (2002). “Legal Origins”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117, 11931229.
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12
Table 1 – The Country Index of Citizen Law-making
Country
Score
Country
Albania
2
Latvia
Armenia
1
Liechtenstein
Austria
5
Lithuania
Azerbaijan
1
Luxembourg
Belarus
1
Macedonia
Belgium
5
Malta
Britain
4
Moldova
Bulgaria
5
Netherlands
Croatia
3
Norway
Cyprus
3
Poland
Czech Republic
5
Portugal
Denmark
6
Romania
Estonia
4
Russia
Finland
4
Serbia-Montenegro
France
5
Slovenia
Georgia
2
Slovakia
Germany
4
Spain
Greece
3
Sweden
Hungary
4
Switzerland
Iceland
3
Turkey
Ireland
6
Ukraine
Italy
6
Source: Kaufmann (2004)
13
Score
5
5
6
5
2
4
2
6
5
5
5
4
1
2
6
6
5
4
7
2
1
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
British
French
German
Scandinavian
Fig. 1 - Direct democracy index by legal origin
14
Socialist
Table 2 – Summary statistics
Variable
Mean
CATHO
36.600
CICLM
0.548
CORR
4.553
FMRSOC
0.488
FMRUSSR
0.232
GOVEFF
0.788
HET
0.277
LPOP
3.825
LYP
9.391
MAJ
0.445
MUSL
7.603
PRIGHTS
6.024
PRES
0.349
PROPDEF
3.800
Variance
38.796
0.275
2.622
0.506
0.427
0.954
0.180
2.847
0.792
0.476
20.736
1.439
0.477
0.979
15
Min
0.000
0.000
0.300
0.000
0.000
-0.930
0.041
-1.329
7.641
0.000
0.000
2.000
0.000
2.000
Max
97.300
1.000
10.000
1.000
1.000
2.250
0.587
9.272
10.839
1.000
99.200
7.000
1.000
5.000
Table 3 – OLS results
(1)
Constant
-1.598***
(0.443)
LYP
0.227***
(0.044)
LPOP
-0.004
(0.012)
HET
0.093
(0.149)
PRES
MAJ
(2)
-1.345***
(0.438)
0.203***
(0.042)
0.005
(0.011)
0.136
(0.178)
-0.106
(0.084)
-0.081
(0.065)
CATHO
MUSL
(3)
-0.358
(0.575)
0.094
(0.059)
(4)
-0.289
(0.535)
0.090
(0.056)
(5)
-0.014
(0.462)
0.063
(0.048)
(6)
-0.734
(0.641)
0.134*
(0.067)
0.115
(0.148)
-0.134*
(0.067)
-0.086*
(0.049)
0.0025***
(0.0008)
-0.0022***
0.0008
-0.120*
(0.066)
-0.084*
(0.049)
0.0025***
(0.0008)
-0.0022***
(0.0008)
-0.062
(0.070)
-0.091**
(0.049)
0.0023**
(0.0009)
-0.0026***
(0.0008)
-0.140
(0.136)
-0.123*
(0.071)
-0.092*
(0.048)
0.0024***
(0.0008)
-0.0018*
(0.0009)
FMRUSSR
FMRSOC
Obs.
Adj-R2
F
43
0.451
10.68***
43
0.494
7.22***
43
0.615
9.564***
43
0.610
11.56***
43
0.632
10.29***
0.078
(0.076)
43
0.616
9.621***
Numbers in parentheses are robust standard errors. *, **, and *** denote significance at 10%, 5%, and 1% levels,
respectively.
16
Table 4 – 2SLS results
POLRIGHTS
(1)
0.087**
(0.039)
PROPDEF
(2)
(3)
0.097**
(0.046)
CORR
-0.035*
(0.017)
GOVEFF
Obs.
F
Over-id
(4)
43
59.50***
1.385
40
42.07***
1.186
43
56.18***
2.407
0.090**
(0.042)
43
65.52***
2.043
Covariates include: MAJ, CATHO and MUSL. Numbers in parentheses are robust standard errors. *, **, and ***
denote significance at 10%, 5%, and 1% levels, respectively.
17
DATA APPENDIX
Correlation matrix
CATHO
CICLM
CORR
FMRSOC
FMRUSSR
GOVEFF
HET
LPOP
LYP
MAJ
MUSL
PRIGHTS
PRES
PROPDEF
CATHO
1.000
CICLM
0.585
1.000
CORR
-0.241
-0.605
1.000
FMRSOC
-0.240
-0.393
0.792
1.000
FMRUSSR
-0.379
-0.601
0.553
0.606
1.000
GOVEFF
0.326
0.697
-0.963
-0.762
-0.626
1.000
HET
-0.059
-0.099
0.351
0.425
0.430
-0.330
1.000
LPOP
-0.042
-0.345
0.527
0.496
0.437
-0.533
0.333
1.000
LYP
0.491
0.657
-0.867
-0.771
-0.633
0.892
-0.326
-0.537
1.000
MAJ
-0.046
-0.301
0.370
0.303
0.197
-0.336
0.061
0.459
-0.247
1.000
MUSL
-0.293
-0.402
0.332
0.044
0.126
-0.355
0.024
0.268
-0.379
0.057
1.000
PRIGHTS
0.455
0.757
-0.733
-0.558
-0.585
0.807
-0.334
-0.530
0.773
-0.264
-0.591
1.000
PRES
-0.214
-0.492
0.553
0.515
0.708
-0.545
0.346
0.448
-0.596
0.323
0.114
-0.509
1.000
PROPDEF
0.201
0.520
-0.827
-0.725
-0.471
0.830
-0.225
-0.510
0.791
-0.305
-0.261
0.684
-0.512
1.000
Working Papers
The full text of the working papers is downloadable at http://polis.unipmn.it/
*Economics Series
**Political Theory Series
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Al.Ex Series
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2006 n.66*
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2006 n.65*
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riforma costituzionale
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of the Italian electoral system
2005 n.59ε
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behavior: an experiment
2005 n.55**
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2005 n. 54*
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2005 n.53*
Ferruccio Ponzano, Competition among different levels of government: the reelection problem.
2005 n.52*
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2005 n.51*
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2005 n.49*
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della tecnologia e conseguenze microeconomiche
2005 n.48*
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Models
2005 n.47ε
Guido Ortona, Voting on the Electoral System: an Experiment
2004 n.46ε
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Punishment Game Experiments.
2004 n.45*
Daniele Bondonio, Do business incentives increase employment in declining
areas? Mean impacts versus impacts by degrees of economic distress.
2004 n.44**
Joerg Luther, La valorizzazione del Museo provinciale della battaglia di
Marengo: un parere di diritto pubblico
2004 n.43*
Ferruccio Ponzano, The allocation of the income tax among different levels of
government: a theoretical solution
2004 n.42*
Albert Breton e Angela Fraschini, Intergovernmental equalization grants: some
fundamental principles
2004 n.41*
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Analisis of European Countries
2004 n.40**
Francesco Ingravalle, Stato, groβe Politik ed Europa nel pensiero politico di F.
W. Nietzsche
2003 n.39ε
Marie Edith Bissey, Claudia Canegallo, Guido Ortona and Francesco Scacciati,
Competition vs. cooperation. An experimental inquiry
2003 n.38ε
Marie-Edith Bissey, Mauro Carini, Guido Ortona, ALEX3: a simulation program
to compare electoral systems
2003 n.37*
Cinzia Di Novi, Regolazione dei prezzi o razionamento: l’efficacia dei due
sistemi di allocazione nella fornitura di risorse scarse a coloro che ne hanno
maggiore necessita’
2003 n. 36*
Marilena Localtelli, Roberto Zanola, The Market for Picasso Prints: An Hybrid
Model Approach
2003 n. 35*
Marcello Montefiori, Hotelling competition on quality in the health care market.
2003 n. 34*
Michela Gobbi, A Viable Alternative: the Scandinavian Model of
Democracy”
2002 n. 33*
Mario Ferrero, Radicalization as a reaction to failure: an economic model of
islamic extremism
2002 n. 32ε
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2002 n. 31**
Silvano Belligni, Francesco Ingravalle, Guido Ortona, Pasquale Pasquino,
Michel Senellart, Trasformazioni della politica. Contributi al seminario di
Teoria politica
2002 n. 30*
Franco Amisano, La corruzione amministrativa in una burocrazia di tipo
concorrenziale: modelli di analisi economica.
2002 n. 29*
Marcello Montefiori, Libertà di scelta e contratti prospettici: l’asimmetria
informativa nel mercato delle cure sanitarie ospedaliere
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“Social
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2002 n. 27**
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federale. Walter Hallstein e la crisi della “sedia vuota”(1965-66)
2002 n. 26**
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2002 n. 25ε
Marie-Edith Bissey and Guido Ortona, A simulative frame to study the
integration of defectors in a cooperative setting
2001 n. 24*
Ferruccio Ponzano, Efficiency wages and endogenous supervision technology
2001 n. 23*
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leave an inheritance?
2001 n. 22*
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Self-selection of risk-averse taxpayers
2001 n. 21*
Claudia Canegallo, Una valutazione delle carriere dei giovani lavoratori atipici:
la fedeltà aziendale premia?
2001 n. 20*
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amore per il prossimo?
2001 n. 19*
Stefania Ravazzi, La lettura contemporanea del cosiddetto dibattito fra Hobbes
e Hume
2001 n. 18*
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contrastare i monopolisti predoni e la burocrazia corrotta
2001 n. 17*
Daniele Bondonio, Evaluating Decentralized Policies: How to Compare the
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2000 n. 16*
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2000 n. 15*
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2000 n. 14*
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specifico target territoriale
2000
n. 13* Roberto Zanola, Public goods versus publicly provided private goods in a
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2000 n. 12**
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repubblicana.
2000 n. 11**
Silvano Belligni, Magistrati e politici nella crisi italiana. Democrazia dei
guardiani e neopopulismo
2000 n. 10*
Rosella Levaggi and Roberto Zanola, The Flypaper Effect: Evidence from the
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1999 n. 9*
Mario Ferrero, A model of the political enterprise
1999 n. 8*
Claudia Canegallo, Funzionamento del mercato del lavoro in presenza di
informazione asimmetrica
1999 n. 7**
Silvano Belligni, Corruzione, malcostume amministrativo e strategie etiche. Il
ruolo dei codici.
1999 n. 6*
Carla Marchese and Fabio Privileggi, Taxpayers Attitudes Towaer Risk and
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1999 n. 5*
Luigi Montrucchio and Fabio Privileggi, On Fragility of Bubbles in Equilibrium
Asset Pricing Models of Lucas-Type
1999 n. 4**
Guido Ortona, A weighted-voting electoral system that performs quite well.
1999 n. 3*
Mario Poma, Benefici economici e ambientali dei diritti di inquinamento: il caso
della riduzione dell’acido cromico dai reflui industriali.
1999 n. 2*
Guido Ortona, Una politica di emergenza contro la disoccupazione semplice,
efficace equasi efficiente.
1998 n. 1*
Fabio Privileggi, Carla Marchese and Alberto Cassone, Risk Attitudes and the
Shift of Liability from the Principal to the Agent
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COASE (1992a; 1992b, ch. 4) has also criticized this bias....
and
“...the market has an even more shadowy role than the firm” (COASE 1988, 7).
List the complete references alphabetically as follows:
Periodicals:
KLEIN, B. (1980), “Transaction Cost Determinants of ‘Unfair’ Contractual Arrangements,”
American Economic Review, 70(2), 356-362.
KLEIN, B., R. G. CRAWFORD and A. A. ALCHIAN (1978), “Vertical Integration, Appropriable
Rents, and the Competitive Contracting Process,” Journal of Law and Economics, 21(2), 297-326.
Monographs:
NELSON, R. R. and S. G. WINTER (1982), An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, 2nd ed.,
Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.
Contributions to collective works:
STIGLITZ, J. E. (1989), “Imperfect Information in the Product Market,” pp. 769-847, in R.
SCHMALENSEE and R. D. WILLIG (eds.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, Vol. I, North
Holland: Amsterdam-London-New York-Tokyo.
Working papers:
WILLIAMSON, O. E. (1993), “Redistribution and Efficiency: The Remediableness Standard,”
Working paper, Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley.

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