Papers by George Tridimas
Constitutional Political Economy
In the transition to democracy some autocracies transformed to republics while others evolved to ... more In the transition to democracy some autocracies transformed to republics while others evolved to constitutional monarchies. The paper inquires how constitutional monarchy is established. It models a hereditary king and a liberal challenger who coexist over a succession of periods and fight for power which brings office rents and the right to decide one’s preferred policy. The outcome of the confrontation is uncertain and may vary from period to period. If the king wins, he establishes absolute monarchy, but if the liberal wins he establishes a republic. Instead of fighting they may agree on a constitutional monarchy and share office rents and policy making responsibilities. Whether constitutional monarchy is agreed depends on the marginal utilities from rents and policy preferences of the two actors, the sizes of the benefits from rents and policy, the rates by which they discount the future, and the probabilities of winning office. The contemporary European constitutional monarch a...
Encyclopedia of Law and Economics
European Journal of Law and Economics
On 24 September 2019, in a unanimous judgment the UK Supreme Court ([2019] UKSC 41) ruled that th... more On 24 September 2019, in a unanimous judgment the UK Supreme Court ([2019] UKSC 41) ruled that the Prime Minister’s action to prorogue (suspend) Parliament for 5 weeks in the run-up to the 31-10-2019 deadline of the UK leaving the European Union, was unlawful and of no effect, as it prevented Parliament from carrying out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification. Although the Court did not pronounce on the merits and demerits of Brexit, its decision delighted “Remainers” but appalled “Leavers”. The Court ruling epitomises the potency of constitutional review by an independent judiciary. The paper applies collective choice theory to analyse the ruling of the Supreme Court. This is accomplished by (a) examining the legal basis of the Court ruling; (b) reviewing arguments for judicial review and (c) exploring the effect of the Court as an additional player in the game of collective choice in a spatial decision model.
Homo Oeconomicus
The substantive view of the ancient economy argues that social considerations and especially the ... more The substantive view of the ancient economy argues that social considerations and especially the quest for status featured prominently in ancient Greece. Paying for liturgies, the private finance of public expenditure by wealthy individuals, offered the opportunity to acquire status by choosing the level of contributions to outperform rival providers. Effectively, liturgies were a system of finance of public provision through redistributive taxation sidestepping state administration of taxes and expenditures. Applying the insights of the economic approach to status, the paper examines status competition in ancient Athens and compares paying for liturgies with a hypothetical system of explicit income taxation of the rich. It is concluded that status seeking increased aggregate provision of public goods. The results formalise important aspects of substantivism and illustrate the value of formal economic analysis in the investigation of the ancient Greek economy.
Homo Oeconomicus
Among the several thought provoking arguments for reforming democracy, Bruno Frey advocates sorti... more Among the several thought provoking arguments for reforming democracy, Bruno Frey advocates sortition, that is, appointment to (some) public offices by lottery. Sortition was the hallmark of the direct democracy of ancient Athens. The paper assesses the Athenian practice of sortition by the criteria of representativeness, equity, partisanship, rent seeking, resource economy, and suitability of candidates for office. It concludes that, in view of fundamental conceptual differences between the Athenian democracy and the modern representative government, introduction of sortition into modern representative democracy poses extremely demanding challenges.
Constitutional Political Economy
The specific way the Athenians set up their democracy presents both theoretical and empirical cha... more The specific way the Athenians set up their democracy presents both theoretical and empirical challenges. Decisions were taken by majority vote in the Assembly. To keep politicians in line, the Athenians first used ostracism, which however was replaced by the graphe paranomon around 415 BCE. The latter provided that anybody who had made a proposal in the Assembly could be accused of having made an unconstitutional suggestion, bringing a potentially severe penalty if found guilty. We know of 35 such cases between 403 and 322. During the fourth century the notion of illegality was extended to a mere question of political undesirability. Henceforth any decision by the Assembly could be overturned by the courts, but if the accuser failed to get at least 20% of the jury votes, he was punished instead. While these rules can be seen as a safeguard against bad decisions, they also provided the Athenian politicians with important information about the relative strength of their political support. This effect has not been analysed before, and it may help explain the relative stability of political life in classical Athens. Furthermore this analysis also contributes to our understanding of a curious but often overlooked fact, namely that the decrees of the Athenian Assembly to a great extent concerned honorary rewards, and the use of the graphe paranomon in turn was largely focussed on the honorary decrees.
Journal of Institutional Economics
Along with introducing democracy, advancing philosophy and excelling at the arts, during the peri... more Along with introducing democracy, advancing philosophy and excelling at the arts, during the period 800–300 bce ancient Greece achieved substantial economic prosperity. Recent literature attributes the efflorescence to the institutions and culture of democratic city-states. However, the city-states failed to initiate sustained growth. Technological progress remained slow and the economic efflorescence ended after the prevalence of Macedon and the subsequent Roman conquest. The present study scrutinises the roles of city-state institutions and culture. It shows that ultimately ancient Greece could not sustain long-run growth because a multitude of independent small city-states prevented the exploitation of economies of scale and stoked continual wars that exhausted them financially and militarily, and because of a culture valuing landholding, self-sufficiency and collectivist attitudes.
Transitional Economies, 2001
Transitional Economies, 2001
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oxford, 1990.
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oxford, 1990.
The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, 2011
Constitutional Political Economy, 2010
Drawing on the 1974 Greek parliamentary elections and constitutional referendum which abolished t... more Drawing on the 1974 Greek parliamentary elections and constitutional referendum which abolished the monarchy, the paper employs a spatial decision model to examine the strategic use of a parliamentary election and a non mandatory referendum by an agenda setter. The parliamentary election bundles two issues, the right to form a government and the right to choose the form of state.
Constitutional Political Economy, 2010
Drawing on the 1974 Greek parliamentary elections and constitutional referendum which abolished t... more Drawing on the 1974 Greek parliamentary elections and constitutional referendum which abolished the monarchy, the paper employs a spatial decision model to examine the strategic use of a parliamentary election and a non mandatory referendum by an agenda setter. The parliamentary election bundles two issues, the right to form a government and the right to choose the form of state.
German-Greek Yearbook of Political Economy Vollume II, 2019
Nineteenth century German thinkers have been instrumental in defining and shaping the debate abou... more Nineteenth century German thinkers have been instrumental in defining and shaping the debate about the nature of the ancient Greek economy. The present essay reviews the debate between primitivism and modernism and, following Max Weber's contributions, its successor debate between substantivism and formalism. As this debate concerns the applicability of the rational choice model to the decision-making of the ancient actor, the paper also surveys questions about the role of institutions and ideology in explaining economic behaviour.
Among the several thought provoking arguments for reforming democracy, Bruno Frey advocates sorti... more Among the several thought provoking arguments for reforming democracy, Bruno Frey advocates sortition, that is, appointment to (some) public offices by lottery. Sortition was the hallmark of the direct democracy of ancient Athens. The paper assesses the Athenian practice of sortition by the criteria of representativeness, equity, partisanship, rent seeking, resource economy, and suitability of candidates for office. It concludes that, in view of fundamental conceptual differences between the Athenian democracy and the modern representative government, introduction of sortition into modern representative democracy poses extremely demanding challenges.
Contrary to modern representative democracies where elections tend to take place years apart, in ... more Contrary to modern representative democracies where elections tend to take place years apart, in the direct democracy of ancient Athens the assembly of the citizens met to decide policy up to forty times per year. The paper explores a model of constitutional choice where self-interested citizens decide how long to wait until they vote by maximising the net gain from an uncertain voting outcome. It is found that the frequency of voting increases unambiguously when the probability of being a member of the winning majority increases, and decreases with the loss from being a member of the losing minority and the resource cost of the vote. Under some plausible conditions, the frequency also rises with increases in the utility gain from the vote, the discount rate, and the required majority to pass a policy motion. It is argued that those conditions were met in Athens.
The chapter investigates the sources and contests for rents in ancient Athens. After reviewing th... more The chapter investigates the sources and contests for rents in ancient Athens. After reviewing the institutions of direct democracy invented and practiced during the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, it focuses on the rents derived from controlling citizenship rights, slave labor, subjugation of foreign territories and silver deposits. It then examines the insights that the rent seeking approach offers to explain aspects of regulatory policies, tax revenues and public expenditures in Athens. It reveals a distinctive structure that combined free market exchanges, trade taxes but no income taxes, taxation of the rich in the form of property levies and mandatory financing of public services, auctions of public assets, tax farming, wide access to paid public office, where appointment was made by lot, and payment of theatre money to all citizens. Political leaders had opportunities for rent seeking, but they were also closely scrutinized by popular courts. This pattern is broadly consistent with the prediction that under direct democracy large sums of universal benefits are provided to the poor majority of voters. The chapter concludes by arguing that the rent seeking approach validates the view that economic rationality was prevalent in the ancient economy 'where there are revenues men must not do what the popular leaders do now (for they use the surplus for doles, and people no sooner get them than they want the same doles again, because this way of helping the poor is the legendary jar with a hole in it), but the truly democratic statesman must study how the multitude may be saved from extreme poverty; for this is what causes democracy to be corrupt' (Aristotle, Politics 1320a 30–35).
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Papers by George Tridimas