It is usually asserted that political instability significantly lowers private investment, as well as economic growth, since it has adverse influence on property rights, and by that on investment and growth (i.e, Robert Barro, 1991; Ross Levine & David Renelt, 1992; Paolo Mauro, 1994; Edgardo Zablotsky, 1994).

This paper studies the relation between the marginalist revolution and the use of the mathematical method in economics. A first version of this work was written as a term paper when I was a student of George Stigler at the University of Chicago. The present version has been benefitted from his comments and suggestions, as well as from the original bibliographical references provided by professor Stigler.

This paper postulates the hypothesis that the stability of the rules under which compete the different interest groups is a relevant consideration to explain economic growth; under this hypothesis it is possible to propose indices that may capture the degree of stability of the rules of the redistributive game better than the usual measures of political stability.

This paper is concerned with the role played by the size of an interest group in the production of collective political pressure, and with its success in the redistribution of political income.

Most of the regulation literature sustains the hypothesis that the optimal size of an interest group is somewhat small. This support can be traced back as early as 1908 when The Process of Government, seminal book written by Arthur Bentley, was first published.

Este trabajo constituye un intento de confrontar el marco conceptual propuesto por la economía de la regulación con la evidencia empírica provista por la estructura arancelaria Argentina. Con ese fin analizaremos la plausibilidad que variables propuestas por la economía de la regulación sean de utilidad a los fines de explicar dicha estructura arancelaria.

Supongamos que la administración municipal de una determinada ciudad se caracteriza por su alto nivel de corrupción y que deseamos investigar este fenómeno. Tenemos a nuestra disposición diversas alternativas, una opción naive consiste en postular la hipótesis que la corrupción existe porque funcionarios corruptos ocupan cargos públicos; designemos en dichos cargos a hombres y mujeres honestos y la corrupción habrá de desaparecer.

Since the pioneering works of Anthony Downs (1957), James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock (1962), and William Riker (1962) most of the public choice literature have been developed under a democratic framework. These works, which are based upon the assumptions of utility maximization and rationality of the individual voters, present testable theories of political behavior.

In 1908 Arthur Bentley proposed an economic approach to political behavior that focused on political pressure groups instead of voters, politicians and political parties; under this framework the economic policies have to be interpreted as equilibriums, given that they are the end product of a redistributive game; game which is highly influenced by the rules under which it is played.

La presente investigación se encuentra dedicada a estudiar la relevancia de la Ley Saenz Peña, la cual instauró el sufragio universal, secreto y obligatorio en la Argentina, a la hora de interpretar las diversas políticas económicas llevadas a cabo en el país.

This paper analyzes the effects upon resource allocation, welfare and the public sector deficit of two lobbies, the public sector contractor's lobby (the PSC lobby), and the labor union's lobby (the LU lobby).