What determines the capacity of countries to design, approve, and implement effective public policies? To address this issue, this book builds on the results of a comparative study of political institutions, policymaking processes, and policy outcomes in eight Latin American countries. The volume benefits from both micro detail on the intricacies of policymaking in individual countries and a broad cross-country interdisciplinary analysis of the process in the region.

The country studies demonstrate a deep knowledge of the specific historical dynamics and idiosyncratic structural factors at play in each case, while focusing on the effects of political institutions as viewed through a common analytical lens founded in game theory and institutional analysis. This book should become a staple on the syllabus of any class on Latin American politics or institutional politics and important background reading in many classes on development economics.

In the past thirty years, democratic freedom and competitive electoral processes have taken hold as never before in Latin America. This book zeroes in on the intricate workings of democratic institutions (such as political party systems and the legislature), the actors that participate in democratic systems (such as governors, judges, bureaucrats, and other members of civil society), and the arenas in which political and policy interactions take place (which may be formal, such as the legislature, or informal). The focus is on how those institutions, actors, and arenas affect the policymaking processes of Latin American countries for better or worse. In its scope and complexity, the volume moves well beyond stylized views of the political systems in Latin America.

The authors have two purposes in this book, and they succeed admirably at both. They develop a general model of public policy making focused on the difficulties of securing intertemporal exchanges among politicians. They combine the tools of game theory with Williamson's transaction cost theory, North's institutional arguments, and contract theory to provide a general theory of public policy making in a comparative political economy setting. They also undertake a detailed study of Argentina, using statistical analyses on newly developed data to complement their nuanced account of institutions, rules, incentives and outcomes. Mariano Tommasi (Ph.D. in Economics, University of Chicago, 1991) is Professor of Economics at Universidad de San Andres in Argentina. He is past President (20042005) of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association. He has published articles in journals such as American Economic Review; American Journal of Political Science; American Political Science Review; Journal of Development Economic; Journal of Monetary Economics; International Economic Review; Economics and Politics; Journal of Law, Economics and Organization; Journal of Public Economic Theory; Journal of International Economics; and the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics. He has held visiting positions in Economics, Business, and Political Science at Yale, Harvard, UCLA, Tel Aviv, and various Latin American universities. He has received various fellowships and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006. He has been an advisor to several Latin American governments and to international organizations such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.

The authors have two purposes in this book, and they succeed admirably at both. They develop a general model of public policy making focused on the difficulties of securing intertemporal exchanges among politicians. They combine the tools of game theory with Williamson's transaction cost theory, North's institutional arguments, and contract theory to provide a general theory of public policy making in a comparative political economy setting. They also undertake a detailed study of Argentina, using statistical analyses on newly developed data to complement their nuanced account of institutions, rules, incentives and outcomes. Mariano Tommasi (Ph.D. in Economics, University of Chicago, 1991) is Professor of Economics at Universidad de San Andres in Argentina. He is past President (2004??2005) of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association. He has published articles in journals such as American Economic Review; American Journal of Political Science; American Political Science Review; Journal of Development Economic; Journal of Monetary Economics; International Economic Review; Economics and Politics; Journal of Law, Economics and Organization; Journal of Public Economic Theory; Journal of International Economics; and the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics. He has held visiting positions in Economics, Business, and Political Science at Yale, Harvard, UCLA, Tel Aviv, and various Latin American universities. He has received various fellowships and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006. He has been an advisor to several Latin American governments and to international organizations such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.

What do sex, contraceptives, marriage, divorce, alcohol, religion, politics, crime, and punishment have in common with inflation, monopoly, and exchange rates? The answer given in this book is that the formers are all aspects of human behavior, which, like the latter, can be analyzed and modeled using conventional economic methods. The application of economic reasoning to human behavior, which was until recently considered to be beyond the scope of economic analysis, was pioneered by Gary Becker, the 1992 Nobel Laureate in Economics. Becker's excursions into sociology, anthropology, and political science led him to think about issues such as marriage, religion, and crime in an entirely new way, and eventually to assert that all actions, whether working, playing, dating, or mating, have economic motivations and consequences. This book is an accessible introduction to Becker's work and ideas. It explains to students the ways in which the standard tools of economics can be used to understand a wide range of human activities, and in doing so, offer provocative insights into a wide range of social issues.

This volume views important social and political issues through the eyes of economists. Pioneered by Gary Becker, this approach asserts that all actions, whether working, playing, dating, or mating, have economic motivations and consequences, and can be analyzed using economic reasoning. Intended as an introduction to the current state of the field, the essays are informal and nontechnical, while still using up-to-date economic reasoning to illuminate such topics as crime, marriage, discrimination, immigration, fads and fashions.