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1 | |
Fiscal federalism is a framework for thinking about which decisions should be made by which levels of government. |
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| | A) | TRUE |
| | B) | FALSE |
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2 | |
The 3 pillars of the European Union are a way of ensuring that some issues are decided by member states rather than by EU procedures. |
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| | A) | TRUE |
| | B) | FALSE |
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3 | |
Efficiency in decision-making is defined as the easiness of getting a random proposal passed. |
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| | A) | TRUE |
| | B) | FALSE |
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4 | |
The efficiency of a given decision making rule depends only on the majority threshold. |
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| | A) | TRUE |
| | B) | FALSE |
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5 | |
For a given group of voters each with a given number of votes, raising the majority threshold from 50% to, say, 72% can never increase the group’s decision making efficiency. |
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| | A) | TRUE |
| | B) | FALSE |
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6 | |
In the EU15, the allocation of power as measured by the Normalised Banzhaf Index is quite close to the national vote shares in the Council of Ministers. |
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| | A) | TRUE |
| | B) | FALSE |
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7 | |
The Qualified Majority Voting system was first proposed in the Single European Act. |
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| | A) | TRUE |
| | B) | FALSE |
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8 | |
The biggest EU members have more power in the Council of Ministers than do small members, but not as much as the size of their populations would suggest. |
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| | A) | TRUE |
| | B) | FALSE |
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9 | |
The reforms in the Treaty of Nice made the EU’s decision-making procedure less efficiency. |
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| | A) | TRUE |
| | B) | FALSE |
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10 | |
The voting reforms proposed in the draft Constitutional Treaty were necessary because the Treaties of Nice and Amsterdam failed to adopt the reforms necessary to prepare the EU for the 2004 enlargement. |
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| | A) | TRUE |
| | B) | FALSE |
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11 | |
Which of the following are the main trade-offs in the theory of fiscal federalism? |
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| | A) | Lower costs due to scale versus loss from one-size-fits-all policy, efficiency versus legitimacy, wider versus deeper, subsidiarity versus solidarity. |
| | B) | Tax rate versus tax base, efficiency versus legitimacy, wider versus deeper, subsidiarity versus solidarity. |
| | C) | Lower costs due to scale versus loss from one-size-fits-all policy, informational advantage of taking decisions close to voters versus coordination of multi-district spillovers. |
| | D) | None of the above. |
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12 | |
The passage probability is: |
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| | A) | the probability that any proposal can be passed. |
| | B) | an estimate of the fraction of proposal that will actually pass (as opposed to being rejected). |
| | C) | the probability that a proposal is passed from the Council to the Parliament. |
| | D) | the likelihood that a randomly drawn proposal would pass. |
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13 | |
The Normalised Banzhaf Index of power measures: |
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| | A) | the probability that a given nation will find itself in a situation where it could break a winning coalition. |
| | B) | the likelihood that a nation’s vote will be able to turn a losing coalition into a winning coalition. |
| | C) | a measure of a voting system’s legitimacy. |
| | D) | the average of every member’s power. |
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14 | |
The main reason that the 2004 enlargement of the EU would have reduced decision-making efficiency is: |
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| | A) | the newcomers are likely to vote as a block and oppose most proposals. |
| | B) | the fact that each nation gets one vote in the Council of Ministers makes it much harder to find a majority with more nations as members. |
| | C) | most of the newcomers are small and thus would received a disproportionate number of votes. |
| | D) | the efficiency of any voting system decreases whenever more members join, regardless of the distribution of votes. |
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15 | |
If one defines legitimacy as equal power per EU citizen, the allocation of votes in the Council of Ministers: |
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| | A) | should be proportional to each nation’s population. |
| | B) | should give more votes per person to the largest nation. |
| | C) | should give one vote to each member state. |
| | D) | should follow the square root of each nation’s population. |
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16 | |
The first, second and third pillars of the European Union cover, respectively, _________, _________, and _________ issues. |
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| | A) | economy, unemployment policy, monetary policy |
| | B) | security, justice, monetary policy |
| | C) | economic, security (or defence and foreign affairs), justice (or home affairs) |
| | D) | None of the above. |
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17 | |
In the theory of fiscal federalism an area is more likely to be assigned to the highest level when preferences are very _________ and scale economies are very ___________. |
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| | A) | homogeneous (the same, or similar), important (high, or big) |
| | B) | polarized, small |
| | C) | homogenous, small |
| | D) | None of the above. |
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18 | |
What does the term passage probability refer to? |
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