{"id":243,"date":"2012-01-23T19:36:28","date_gmt":"2012-01-23T19:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rulesofreason.wordpress.com\/?p=243"},"modified":"2012-01-23T19:36:28","modified_gmt":"2012-01-23T19:36:28","slug":"myrons-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=243","title":{"rendered":"Myron’s Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Asymptotically, any finite tax code collects zero revenue”<\/em><\/p>\n

This is what economist Paul Romer calls<\/a> Myron’s Law (after Myron Scholes<\/a>). It is a great aphorism as it illuminates a neglected source of institutional change – the opportunistic adaptation of the regulated actors to the rules which spurs transformations of the rules which leads to behavioral adaptation, ad infinitum<\/em>. Usually, institutions are regarded as sticky, slow-moving and resilient to change. Which might be true for constitutions, but is easily disqualified when once looks beyond the fundamental ‘rules of the game’ into tax codes, the network of public organizations, the details of electoral systems and other lower-level institutions. Few seem to realize that these<\/em> change all the time, and we have precious little theory to explain why. In fact, the degree of change is such that one wonders whether tax codes and the like qualify as institutions at all. In a way, they are like the proverbial river – always changing yet somehow remaining the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Asymptotically, any finite tax code collects zero revenue” This is what economist Paul Romer calls Myron’s Law (after Myron Scholes). It is a great aphorism as it illuminates a neglected source of institutional change – the opportunistic adaptation of the regulated actors to the rules which spurs transformations of the rules which leads to behavioral adaptation, ad infinitum. Usually, institutions are regarded as sticky, slow-moving and resilient to change. Which might be true for constitutions, but is easily disqualified when once looks beyond the fundamental ‘rules of the game’ into tax codes, the network of public organizations, the details of electoral systems and other lower-level institutions. Few seem to realize that these change all the time, and we have precious little theory to explain why. In fact, the degree of change is such that one wonders whether tax codes and the like qualify as institutions at all. In a way, they are like the proverbial river – always changing yet somehow remaining the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[23],"tags":[337,342,427,469,634],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g3hj-3V","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":93,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=93","url_meta":{"origin":243,"position":0},"title":"More than you ever wanted to know about compliance with EU law in Europe","date":"October 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I \u00a0spent the last week finalizing a \u00a0review of the literature \u00a0on compliance with EU \u00a0law at the national level. 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But it is also about the Reasons of Rules -\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mission statement"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":457,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=457","url_meta":{"origin":243,"position":4},"title":"Inclusive institutions and economic development","date":"May 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Francis Fukuyama reviews Why Nations Fail, the new book by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, at his blog. The review is fairly critical. Fukuyama agrees that institutions are of paramount importance for development (as you would expect given his own recent book) but is unsatisfied\u00a0with the vague (or even missing)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Development"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":467,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=467","url_meta":{"origin":243,"position":5},"title":"Co-decision and decision-making speed in the EU","date":"May 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Our paper (with Anne Rasmussen) on the influence of early agreements (trilogues) on the speed of decision making in the EU has just been published by the European Integration Online Papers (EIoP). The abstract is below. Anne blogged about the findings here. \u00a0 Abstract: The increased use of early agreements\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Institutions and regulation"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}