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To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2005.06.002 Byline: Hideki Konishi Abstract: This paper shows that the composition of fiscal adjustments, spending cuts versus tax increases, serves as a signal of the government's degree of collusion with special interests. The politico-economic model of fiscal policies, combining retrospective voting with common-agency-type lobbying, presents undominated separating equilibria and intuitive pooling ones, in both of which fiscal adjustments with sufficiently large spending cuts lead to incumbent reappointment whereas those with only tax increases lead to incumbent defeat. These findings are consistent with the recent empirical evidence of voters behaving as fiscal conservatives. The efficiency-enhancing aspects of the signaling mechanism and the effects of imposing a deficit limit are also analyzed. Author Affiliation: Department of Social Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, W9-81, 2-12-1,O-okayama, Meguro-ku Tokyo 152-8552, Japan Article History: Received 22 January 2003; Accepted 21 June 2005

This paper shows that the composition of fiscal adjustments, spending cuts versus tax increases, serves as a signal of the government's degree of collusion with special interests. The politico-economic model of fiscal policies, combining retrospective voting with common-agency-type lobbying, presents undominated separating equilibria and intuitive pooling ones, in both of which fiscal adjustments with sufficiently large spending cuts lead to incumbent reappointment whereas those with only tax increases lead to incumbent defeat. These findings are consistent with the recent empirical evidence of voters behaving as fiscal conservatives. The efficiency-enhancing aspects of the signaling mechanism and the effects of imposing a deficit limit are also analyzed. JEL classification: D72; E62; H30 Keywords: Composition of fiscal adjustments; Retrospective voting; Common agency; Deficit limits

The transport characteristics of ultrathin silicon-on-insulator MOSFETs are simulated and the influence of the quantum-mechanical mechanism on the short channel effects is evaluated on the basis of the density-gradient model. It is clearly shown that the quantum-mechanical mechanism suppresses the buried-insulator-induced barrier lowering with regard to the subthreshold swing and it is suggested that the mechanism enhances the impact of the apparent charge-sharing effect on the threshold voltage.

The relative efficiency of tariffs versus quotas is analysed in a Cournot oligopoly with strategic investment, introducing quota licence fees to neutralize the international distributional effect. When such licence fees remove quota rents from foreign firms, then for the case of constrained entry with a sufficiently large number of firms, quotas frequently hold a welfare advantage, since tariffs relatively aggravate the inefficiency from overinvestment. In the case of free entry and exit, however, tariffs hold a welfare advantage, since there is greater benefit of increasing returns to scale to the economy by avoidance of excessive entry of firms.