Commodity Bundling and Agenda Control in the Public Sector

Robert J. Mackay and Carolyn L. Weaver

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1983, vol. 98, issue 4, 611-635

Abstract: In the public sector, commodity bundling involves an agenda setter exercising control over a governmental unit's budgetary mixâ€âthe allocation of the unit's total budget to its various subactivitiesâ€âin order to manipulate electoral outcomes on other fiscal variables such as the total budget. This paper develops an analytical model of a political market in which a multi-activity governmental unit practices commodity bundling in order to advance the interests of the setter. Two institutional structures are considered, each involving a different voting process or set of electoral constraints and, hence, a different form of commodity bundling. The paper explores the impact of this form of monopoly power on such policy outcomes as the governmental unit's total budget, its budgetary mix, and the distribution of net benefits from collective action.

Date: 1983
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/1881780 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:qjecon:v:98:y:1983:i:4:p:611-635.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().