nep-cdm New Economics Papers
on Collective Decision-Making
Issue of 2023‒05‒08
three papers chosen by
Stan C. Weeber, McNeese State University


  1. Golden Dawn Is Attempting To Regain A Presence In Greece With A Focus On Northern Greece And Western Thrace By Tulun, Teoman Ertuğrul
  2. Deciding for Others: Local Public Good Contributions with Intermediaries By Andrej Angelovski; Praveen Kujal; Christos Mavridis
  3. Should History Change The Way We Think About Populism? By Alan de Bromhead; Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke

  1. By: Tulun, Teoman Ertuğrul (Center For Eurasian Studies (AVİM))
    Abstract: On December 18, 2022, the far-right neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn (GD) publicly reappeared and held a march and rally in Florina, Northern Greece. GD organized the demonstration in response to the approval of the "Macedonian Language Center" in Greece as an official NGO. In response to the GD's march, groups opposing far-right organizations, student organizations, and leftist political parties staged a counter-protest. GD and other Greek far-right have recently been rallying around the Macedonia issue, using it as a political asset. GD has had a cultural and political base in Greece since the 1973 military coup and regime. They try to find a place for themselves in the spectrum of political parties by prioritizing the issues that the majority of the people will be sensitive to during the periods when the mainstream political parties begin to falter. They also spread hatred against the Muslim Turks in Western Thrace and get involved in the Macedonian issue. Their activities in Northern Greece and the Western Thrace are likely to bring more political benefits and visibility than racist and xenophobic actions against migrants and refugees. The Golden Dawn has officially and on paper disappeared from the political life of Greece, but its political, cultural, and ideological legacy is still alive.
    Date: 2023–03–14
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:6x93m&r=cdm
  2. By: Andrej Angelovski (Middlesex University); Praveen Kujal (Middlesex University and Chapman University); Christos Mavridis (Gabriele d’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescar)
    Abstract: Given the prevalence of local public goods, whose broader use is often limited by distance and borders, we propose a potential solution to the free-riding problem by having each participant/beneficiary delegate the public good contribution decision to a non-local intermediary who neither puts in own endowment into the public good nor benefits from it. Intermediaries make decisions under two compensation mechanisms where the incentives for the intermediary are either non-aligned (fixed) or aligned (variable) with those of the beneficiary. We find that the use of intermediaries, regardless of whether their compensation is aligned or not with that of the beneficiary, significantly increases contributions to the provision of the public good. We conclude that individuals behave differently when they (formally) make decisions for someone else even if their incentive structures are identical.
    Keywords: Public goods, intermediaries, delegation
    JEL: H4 C91 D90
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chu:wpaper:23-06&r=cdm
  3. By: Alan de Bromhead; Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke
    Abstract: This paper asks whether history should change the way in which economists and economic historians think about populism. We use Müller’s definition, according to which populism is ‘an exclusionary form of identity politics, which is why it poses a threat to democracy’. We make three historical arguments. First, late 19th century US Populists were not populist. Second, there is no necessary relationship between populism and anti-globalization sentiment. Third, economists have sometimes been on the wrong side of important policy debates involving opponents rightly or wrongly described as populist. History encourages us to avoid an overly simplistic view of populism and its correlates.
    JEL: D72 N40 N70
    Date: 2023–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31148&r=cdm

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