Mario Ferrero

Competition for Sainthood and the Millennial Church

The Roman Catholic Church has been turning out new saints for two millennia. The argument advanced here is that the saint-making process is arranged as an open contest for sainthood: by combining competitive initiative and pressure from below with exclusive adjudication from above, it provides effective incentives for participants to direct their efforts toward the best interests of the church. This is a key factor that counters bureaucratic ossification and keeps the church thriving. The argument implies that the secular pattern of canonizations should mirror the changing pattern of church demand rather than any exogenous supply of saintly persons, and should translate into a pattern of rise and decline of religious orders which specialize in particular virtues meeting particular demands. Statistical data on canonizations in the second millennium strongly support this empirical implication. Copyright 2002 by WWZ and Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag AG

The political economy of theocracy

Introduction Theocracy and the Separation of Powers The Economics of Theocracy Serving God in a Largely Theocratic Society: Rivalry and Cooperation between Church and King Theocracy, Natural Spiritual Monopoly and Dictatorship On the Economics of the Socialist Theocracy of the Jesuits in Paraguay (1609-1767) Combining Autocracy and Majority Voting: The Canonical Succession Rules of the Latin Church Theocracy and the Evolution of Morals Theocracy as a Screening Device Learning and Imitation by Theocracies An Essay on the Muslim Gap: Religiosity and the Political System The Political Economy of a Semi-Industrialized Theocratic State: The Islamic Republic of Iran

The Cult of Martyrs

This article suggests a rational explanation for extreme voluntary sacrifice in situations in which the state of the world when the decision must be made is observable only by the agent. Such explanation is the cult of martyrs, heroes, and saints. This cult may get out of control and fuel fanaticism, or excessive sacrifice from the standpoint of the sponsoring organization. A survey of the historical evidence of Christian martyrdom strongly suggests that martyrs were driven by the expectation of a cult in this world, not by otherworldly rewards. In particular, it is argued that the evidence of excess martyrdom in both Muslim Spain and the Roman Empire strongly speaks for the cult theory.

Political exchange in mass party regimes and the transition from socialism

Abstract This paper contrasts the east European and the Chinese routes of exit from the Soviet-type economy and argues that a communist regime, if it is to remain in power, cannot renounce state ownership or control of large-scale industry and party control of managerial appointments, careers, and incomes: these two features make up an enforceable, efficient contract for political service in a monopolistic political market. These features were abandoned in the European route and preserved in the Chinese route because of the average versus modal character of party representation and membership in the two groups of countries, so that the modal nature of the Chinese party is the key to the regime’s survival and success under market reform. The approach also explains the failure of Gorbachev’s attempt to export the Chinese model to the Soviet Union in the form of perestroika .

Individual incentives by adjusting work hours: Bellamy's egalitarian economy☆

Abstract Edward Bellamy proposed an ideal egalitarian economy in which production is carried out as a nonprofit government service, income is shared equally by all individuals independently of work exertion, and relative work hours are used as incentives to allocate labor to different jobs. This economy is shown to possess an equilibrium consistent with full freedom of individual choice of occupation and consumption, to be achieved through a fully decentralized titonnement process. However, individuals have an obligation to work which deprives them of their freedom to choose between income and leisure, so that the scale of output is indeterminate and may be nonoptimal unless a social-welfare function is introduced.

You Shall Not Overkill: Substitution Between Means of Group Removal

Abstract This note places mass killing in a continuum of actions that a ruling power can take to remove an unwanted group from a society; that is, it views extermination as a means to an end, and it assumes that rulers are rational and will choose the combination of means that can achieve their goal at the minimum cost to themselves. The means are assimilation into the general society, physical removal from view (through either deportation within the country or exile from the country), and extermination. The note develops a simple model of input choice geared to cost minimization and then finds encouraging support from the historical evidence on communist regimes.

Share Systems and Unemployment: A Theoretical Analysis.

Part 1: A historical precedent - sharecropping. Part 2 Basic models: alternative sharing schemes revenue sharing team piece rate sliding scale a wage-fund system. Part 3 The free access system. Part 4 The demand for capital in the share economy: excess demand for factors in long-run equilibrium the demand for capital with fixed compensation parameters. Part 5 Wage bargaining in the share economy: employment-restraining agreements under revenue sharing revenue sharing in an insider-outsider model revenue sharing in a monopoly union model. Part 6 Efficiency eages in the share economy: the supply of effort in a share system profit maximisation efficiency wage and the demand for labour market equilibrium and comparative statics gains and losses from revenue sharing. Part 7 Risk sharing in the share economy: privately superior wage contracts privately superior share contracts. Part 8 A discriminating share system: Meades blueprint the DLCP at work-problems and complications system stability and property rights.

A Rational Theory of Socialist Public Ownership

This paper asks why socialist economies were historically centered on public ownership of industry, despite its many drawbacks, and offers an explanation founded on rational individual choice. It first shows that the Marxian program of state socialism was subject to intense competition from alternative blueprints by the turn of the 20th century. It then argues that the superiority of the Marxian program lay in the contract enforcement property of an arrangement in which a politicized bureaucracy in charge of production was accountable to a party controlled by the workers. Formally, in a setting in which all participants are selfish and rational, the workers’ sole objective is redistribution, and an initial system choice has to be made. Party-state control of enterprises turns out to be the optimal contract between a principal (the workers) and its agent (the party) for a one-time transaction plagued by extreme informational asymmetry. Finally, modifications of this choice setting and implications for the decline of, and transition from, communism are discussed.

Heavy investment and high pollution as rational choices under socialism

Abstract This paper attempts a rational explanation of the big stylized facts that were the hallmark of the socialist economies: high investment rates, high levels of environmental depletion and defense expenditure. In contrast to the dominant approach in comparative economics, which relies on bureaucratic and/or political preferences, a simple median-voter model yields this structure of national output as the utility-maximizing choice of a decisive voter faced with a redistribution of income that takes the form of collectivization of capital accumulation, whose burden is borne more than proportionally by higher-income groups. This basic model is then extended to deal with different specifications of the political process, different degrees of centralization of decision-making, and the territorial dimension of redistribution.

Killing for the Sake of Infamy: The Herostratos Syndrome and What to Do about it

Abstract The Herostratos syndrome affects some people who perpetrate odious attacks for the sake of infamy. We suggest that this sheds some useful light to explain the wave of mass killing going on in Europe and North America, including school shootings and Jihadist terrorism, within a game-theoretic framework. The analysis points out that policies aimed at countering this type of violence should focus on trivializing these attacks and reducing the publicity that they get in the media.