Thomas Apolte - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Thomas Apolte

Economics of Governance

This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of the conditions of self-enforcing dem... more This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of the conditions of self-enforcing democracy by analyzing the recent wave of autocratic transitions. Based on a game-theoretic framework, we work out the conditions under which governments may induce the diverse public authorities to coordinate on extra-constitutional activities, eventually transforming the politico-institutional setting into one of autocratic rule. We find three empirically testable characteristics that promote this coordination process, namely: populism and public support, corruption, and a lack in the separation of powers. By contrast, low degrees of corruption and strongly separated powers can be viewed as prerequisites to self-enforcing democracy.

Wirtschaftsdienst, 1990

Die für Mitte dieses Jahres angekündigte deutsch-deutsche Wirtschafts-und Währungsunion gilt viel... more Die für Mitte dieses Jahres angekündigte deutsch-deutsche Wirtschafts-und Währungsunion gilt vielen Ökonomen als äußerst problematischer Weg zur politischen und ökonomischen Einheit. Welche Gefahren sind mit ihm aus ökonomischer Sicht verbunden ? Wie unterscheiden sich politische und ökonomische Sichtweise des Einigungsprozesses in ihrer Bewertung der Kosten und Risiken der DDR-Systemtransformation?

Germany’s post war economic system is typically referred to as a Social Market Economy. Both the ... more Germany’s post war economic system is typically referred to as a Social Market Economy. Both the Social Market Economy and the so called “economic miracle”, that is the rapid economic recovery following the devastating World War II, are almost part of the charter myth of Germany’s post war society. Walter Eucken, the perhaps most prominent intellectual mentor of the Social Market Economy, postulated a broad range of interdependent effects of the various political and economic institutions on the degree of a country’s level of both prosperity and freedom (Eucken 1952). While he remained somewhat vague on the question as to how close this interdependence might be and as to what the causal relations were, most commentators argued that liberal economic and political institutions would be both stable and prosperity enhancing only when operating hand in hand, thereby reinforcing each other. Perhaps the most frequently considered interdependence between institutions is the one between the ...

Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, 2004

ABSTRACT This paper deals with the peculiar discussion around centralization and decentralization... more ABSTRACT This paper deals with the peculiar discussion around centralization and decentralization in the European Union. It is argued that large parts of this discussion rest on a flawed analogy of the liberal concept of normative individualism on the one hand and the concept of political decentralization in federal multi-layer systems on the other. Based on this flawed analogy an unusual and partly misleading notion of decentralization has widely been used in the discussion of European Integration. As a result, there are a number of misjudgements in some central topics of European Integration. These topics are the question of institutional competition among governments, the effects of fiscal competition on the tax burden of citizens and a future European constitution. Copyright Verein für Socialpolitik und Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2004

Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch ge... more Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence.

Nach dem Zusammenbruch der sozialistischen Systeme vollzogen die betroffenen L�ndern Mittel- und ... more Nach dem Zusammenbruch der sozialistischen Systeme vollzogen die betroffenen L�ndern Mittel- und Osteuropas in unterschiedlichem Tempo und sequencing den Weg zu Demokratie und einer marktwirtschaftlichen Wirtschaftsordnung. Die polit-�konomischen Probleme bei der Durchsetzung der umfassenden �konomischen Reformen gaben Anlass zu einer bis heute anhaltenden Debatte �ber die Frage, ob die Einf�hrung von Demokratie angesichts umfassender �konomischer Reformen nicht besser verz�gert werden sollte. Nach einer theoretischen Betrachtung von Governance, Demokratie und Reformen folgt in diesem Beitrag ein �berblick �ber empirische Studien zum Zusammenhang zwischen Demokratie und Niveau (oder Wachstum) des BIP pro Kopf. Anschlie�end untersuchen wir mit verschiedenen empirischen Modellen den Zusammenhang zwischen Demokratisierung einerseits und Wirtschaftswachstum oder Niveau des BIP pro Kopf andererseits f�r 30 Transformationsl�nder f�r den Zeitraum von 1992 bis 2007. -- Following the collaps...

Wirtschaftsdienst, 2007

Intereconomics, 1991

Atlantic Economic Journal, 2002

Regulatory competition arises where governments mutually accept quality standards in a common mar... more Regulatory competition arises where governments mutually accept quality standards in a common market. In a recent paper Hans-Werner Sinn claims that regulatory competition will be subject to market failure and lead to "competition of laxity" in a sense that only the lowest possible quality standards survive regulatory competition. In this paper it is shown that these results do not need to follow when some fairly restrictive assumptions of Sinn's model are relaxed. First, if his assumption of a large number of small jurisdictions is given up in favor of the assumption that a small number of larger jurisdictions compete for quality standards, then the resulting quality standards will end up above the minimum level, albeit still below an efficient level. If no subsidies are allowed in order to compensate for losses of producers working under strict quality standards, quality standards will generally converge to the level of the jurisdiction with the lowest quality preferences, but not below this level. Another assumption of Sinn is that governmental quality standards cannot better be judged by consumers than product qualities by producers. If this assumption is relaxed, regulatory competition may even be superior to a harmonized quality standard.

American Political Science Review, 1996

Defence and Peace Economics, 2019

Constitutional Political Economy, 2016

We assess Gordon Tullock’s work on revolutions and dictatorship using a common analytical framewo... more We assess Gordon Tullock’s work on revolutions and dictatorship using a common analytical framework that captures the dynamics of mutually reinforcing perceptions within a potentially rebelling subgroup of a population. We can reconstruct all of Tullock’s central findings but we also find him failing to consider revolutions as an unintended result of individual action in certain low-cost situations. That notwithstanding, one central implication of Tullock’s analysis remains intact, namely that no relation can consistently be constructed between the degree of deprivation of a population on the one hand and the probability of an enforced regime change in a public uprising, at least not within the limits of methodological individualism. Hence, whoever aims at strictly inferring macro results from micro behavior must still find Tullock’s work on autocracies and revolutions path-breaking.

Monetäre Institutionenökonomik, 2001