Sources of Inefficiency in a Representative Democracy: A Dynamic Analysis

@article{citeulike:115365, abstract = {This paper studies the efficiency of policy choice in representative democracies. It extends the citizen-candidate model of democratic policy-making to a dynamic environment. Equilibrium policy choices are shown to be efficient in the sense that in each period, conditional on future policies being selected through the democratic process, there exists no alternative current policy choices which can raise the expected utilities of all citizens. However, policies that would be declared efficient by standard economic criteria are not necessarily adopted in political equilibrium. The paper argues that these divergencies are legitimately viewed as \"political failures.\"}, author = {Besley, Timothy and Coate, Stephen}, citeulike-article-id = {115365}, doi = {10.2307/116822}, journal = {The American Economic Review}, keywords = {democracy, macroeconomics, public\_choice}, number = {1}, pages = {139--156}, posted-at = {2005-03-06 16:48:07}, priority = {2}, title = {Sources of Inefficiency in a Representative Democracy: A Dynamic Analysis}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/116822}, volume = {88}, year = {1998} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:115365 L3 - citeulike-article-id:115365 N2 - This paper studies the efficiency of policy choice in representative democracies. It extends the citizen-candidate model of democratic policy-making to a dynamic environment. Equilibrium policy choices are shown to be efficient in the sense that in each period, conditional on future policies being selected through the democratic process, there exists no alternative current policy choices which can raise the expected utilities of all citizens. However, policies that would be declared efficient by standard economic criteria are not necessarily adopted in political equilibrium. The paper argues that these divergencies are legitimately viewed as "political failures." IS - 1 JF - The American Economic Review EP - 156 TI - Sources of Inefficiency in a Representative Democracy: A Dynamic Analysis VL - 88 SP - 139 KW - democracy KW - macroeconomics KW - public_choice AU - Besley, Timothy AU - Coate, Stephen PY - 1998/// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/116822 ER -