Calendrier du 16 juin 2016
RISK Working Group
Du 16/06/2016 de 17:00 à 18:30
Campus jourdan,Bâtiment A, Rez de chaussée, Salle 4
SEN Partah (Delhi School of Economy)
Anyone for social security reform?
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 16/06/2016 de 12:45 à 13:45
Campus jourdan,Bâtiment A, Rez de chaussée, Salle 4
SEROR Marlon (University of Bristol)
A Theory on the Evolution of Civic Culture and Political Cycles
We argue in this paper that political cycles in democracies impede the diffusion of civic values, thereby contributing to a persistent political instability. Indeed, we build a theory on the evolution of political cycles under repeated majoritarian elections whenever civic values are transmitted inter-generationally. We first establish that cycles in public expenditures result from asymmetric information on incumbents' civic attitude. We then show that recurrent suboptimal increases in the public provision weight on average less on the cultural transmission strategies of the agents with low civic values. This is because the latter have on average a lower propensity to contribute to the public provision, and consequently suffer less from the higher taxes induced by the cycles. Thus, cycles of a sufficiently high magnitude persist because they create weak civic majorities in which informed voters are not majoritarian. At the opposite, low magnitude cycles may not impede the formation of a majority of informed civic voters. The preceding cycles are then transitory and civic norms consolidate once they disappear. Finally, we suggest that the composition of the cycling expenditures matters as well in explaining the diffusion of civic values.