Preventing competition because of 'solidarity': rhetoric and reality of airport investments in Spain

Germà Bel and Xavier Fageda

Applied Economics, 2009, vol. 41, issue 22, 2853-2865

Abstract: From a public interest perspective, there could be a justification for constraining market mechanisms with the aim of progressive redistribution. However, some policies might be based on selfish motivations of government agents. In this article, we empirically contrast if the infrastructure policy is based only on public interest motivations or if it is also based on the private motivations of policy makers. In this way, Spain infrastructure policy provides a useful policymaking field to test hypothesis about the behaviour of policy makers. We find some evidence regarding the strength of political motivations in explaining such behaviour. In fact, results from our analysis show that political motivations can eventually play a more relevant role than social welfare maximization.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036840701522846 (text/html)
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:taf:applec:v:41:y:2009:i:22:p:2853-2865

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036840701522846

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().