Economic Peace Revisited: Coercion and Democracy

Scholars have argued whether democratic peace also holds in the realm of economic sanctions — whether there is an economic peace. Substantial amounts of evidence have been gathered both for and against economic peace and findings have been extremely sensitive to changes in research design. This article provides a new insight, with the use of the updated TIES data set and improved methodology, into the topic of economic peace. It find that democracies are more likely to issue economic sanctions and that there is no economic peace. In fact, democracies are more likely to sanction one another. The article indicate that lack of economic peace is consistent with the public choice approach to economic sanctions. It also argue that the exercise of power among democracies has been rechannelled to economic coercion.

The Impact of Corruption and Rent-Seeking Behavior upon Economic Wealth in the European Union from a Public Choice Approach

The current paper evaluates the impact of corruption and rent-seeking behaviors upon economic wealth in the European Union states using a public choice approach. The period of study is 2000 to 2019. To measure this impact, the present study uses a regression with variables reflecting governance quality and considered relevant, from a public choice approach, to corruption and rent-seeking. The main results of this study show a negative relationship between the level of corruption and economic wealth for all analyzed countries, especially for the ones that compose the new member states group. For all the EU member states, the variables capturing governance quality seem to have a positive impact on economic wealth. The higher levels of governance performance, synonymous with lower levels of rent-seeking, personal interest, and political pressures on state administrations, contribute to economic wealth, as public choice theory emphasizes. There is a need for reform and an increase in the efficiency of public institutions, especially in new member states.

CurmElo: The theory and practice of a forced-choice approach to producing preference rankings

We introduce CurmElo, a forced-choice approach to producing a preference ranking of an arbitrary set of objects that combines the Elo algorithm with novel techniques for detecting and correcting for (1) preference heterogeneity induced polarization in preferences among raters, and (2) intransitivity in preference rankings. We detail the application of CurmElo to the problem of generating approximately preference-neutral identifiers, in this case four-letter and five-letter nonsense words patterned on the phonological conventions of the English language, using a population of Amazon Mechanical Turk workers. We find evidence that human raters have significant non-uniform preferences over these nonsense words, and we detail the consequences of this finding for social science work that utilizes identifiers without accounting for the bias this can induce. In addition, we describe how CurmElo can be used to produce rankings of arbitrary features or dimensions of preference of a set of objects relative to a population of raters.

Legal Liability of Municipal Corporations: A Rational Choice Approach to Optimising Deterrence

Since corporations owned by municipalities provide important services to local populations, unlawful conduct on their part is especially undesirable. This paper researches the elements that need to be present in a legal framework, so that the deterrent effect regarding undesirable conduct of municipal corporations will be optimised. An approach based on rational choice considerations is proposed, which takes into account the necessity of an adequate severity of sanctions, a high likelihood of liability for offenders and the need to deprive them of unlawful gains. Interrelation and cumulative effects of norms pertaining to criminal, civil and disciplinary liability are emphasized. The proposed model has the potential to be used by policy-makers to gain additional insight into merits or demerits of different potential legal regimes aimed at deterrence of unlawful behaviour in municipal corporations and their employees.