Abstract
Parliamentary democracies use the vote of confidence procedure, which links the survival of a government with that of a bill, in order to discipline members of the majority. In this paper I investigate the role that the vote of confidence procedure has on public good provision and show that it has unintended negative consequences: even when efficient, public goods may be turned down in favor of earmarked projects. I use a laboratory experiment to test my model and show that the increase in voting cohesion comes at the cost of a 23 % reduction in public good provision and more unequal earmarking.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 697-717 |
Number of pages | 21 |
Journal | Experimental Economics |
Volume | 18 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 1 2015 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Economics, Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous)