The Political Economics of Wackersdorf: Why Do Politicians Stick to Their Past Decisions?

Franz Wirl

Public Choice, 1991, vol. 70, issue 3, 343-50

Abstract: The politicians' reactions to changing circumstances appear often sluggish. The decisions about the construction of a nuclear reprocessing plant at Wackersdorf, Germany, provide a recent example. Reprivatization of the company led to an immediate cancellation of the project due to its lack of economics. However, politicians tried (and still try) to save the project, despite a large public opposition. This may be considered as irrational because the politicians apparently account for their past investments. This paper argues that a piecemeal type of a policy is rational if voters honor both credibility and populistic decisions. Copyright 1991 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 1991
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:70:y:1991:i:3:p:343-50

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().