The Economics of Transparency in Politics

The purpose of this book is to formulate economic models of the advantages and costs of transparency in various areas of public sector activity and to assess what level of obfuscation in politics is rational. The chapters are arranged in four parts. Part 1 is concerned with the manifestations of transparency and obfuscation in domestic democratic settings whilst Part 2 deals with the same realities but in an international context. Part 3 looks at corruption and Part 4 considers some of the implications of transparency and obfuscation for the working of governments and the formulation of public policies.

Albert Breton is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Economics, University of Toronto, Canada. Much of his research has been and continues to be on the application of neo-classical economics to issues such as federalism and decentralization. Gianluigi Galeotti is Professor of Public Economics at the University of Rome (La Sapienza), Italy. He has worked on the economics of political behavior and now works on a neo-institutional approach to Law and Economics. Pierre Salmon is a member of the Laboratoire d'Economie et de Gestion, a research team of the UniversitAc de Bourgogne, France, where he is now professor emeritus. He formerly taught at the Universities of Rennes and Paris and at the European University Institute in Florence. Ronald Wintrobe is Professor of Economics at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and co-director of the Political Economy Research Group. He has published many books and articles in professional journals.