Optimum Electoral Areas

Andre Sapir and Khalid Sekkat

No 1290, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The paper lies at the intersection between the literature on macroeconomics and politics and the literature on coordination. It uses models of political business cycles in an open economy setting to investigate the costs and benefits of forming electoral areas, i.e. regions where countries share the same electoral calendar. Both opportunistic and partisan models are considered. The main finding of the paper is that the desirability of an electoral area between two countries is enhanced when the spillovers between these countries are large and positive, and when they face symmetric shocks (or are of comparable size). Hence, if a group of countries constitutes an optimum currency area it is also likely to be an optimum electoral area.

Keywords: International Policy Coordination; Political Business Cycles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 F42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1995-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=1290 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

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:cpr:ceprdp:1290

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/ ... ers/dp.php?dpno=1290

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().