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Political competition over property rights enforcement

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posted on 2025-08-01, 11:29 authored by JU Auerbach
I study what level of tax-financed property rights enforcement societies choose in elections when appropriators can steal from producers. Restrictions determine who can run for office. Candidates propose enforcement levels and tax rates. The election winner keeps the budget surplus. If the majority of voters are producers, then fewer restrictions on who can run for office are associated with more secure property rights. Lifting restrictions on who can run benefits producers, while lifting restrictions on who can vote does not. If the majority of voters are appropriators, then elections lead to adverse outcomes, irrespective of who can run for office.

Funding

Center for Research in Economics and Strategy (CRES) in the Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis.

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Rights

© 2020. This version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Notes

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record

Journal

European Economic Review

Publisher

Elsevier

Version

  • Accepted Manuscript

Language

en

FCD date

2021-01-29T09:06:06Z

FOA date

2022-11-19T00:00:00Z

Citation

Vol. 131, article 103604

Department

  • Economics

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