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Self-test Questions
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1Fiscal federalism is a framework that useful for thinking about the various trade-offs faced when allocating different types of decisions to the EU versus the Member States
A)TRUE
B)FALSE



2The Constitutional Treaty, if ratified, would remove the 3 pillars of the European Union
A)TRUE
B)FALSE



3The 'Passage Probability' is a measure of the ease of making decisions.
A)TRUE
B)FALSE



4The passage probability for the Nice Treaty Council of Ministers voting rules is higher than that of the Constitutional Treaty.
A)TRUE
B)FALSE



5For 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.
A)TRUE
B)FALSE



6Scale economies is a factor that generally favours placing decision making at the EU level, while local information generally favours placing it at the Member State level.
A)TRUE
B)FALSE



7The Qualified Majority Voting system was first proposed in the Maastricht Treaty.
A)TRUE
B)FALSE



8Subsidiarity is the principle that decisions should be taken as close to the people as possible.
A)TRUE
B)FALSE



9The goal of the Nice Treaty was to ensure the enlarged EU could continue to take decisions in an efficient and legitimate manner
A)TRUE
B)FALSE



10The voting reforms in the Constitutional Treaty were developed even before the voting reforms in the Nice Treaty were tried
A)TRUE
B)FALSE



11Which of the following are the main trade-offs in the theory of fiscal federalism?
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.



12The passage probability is:
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.



13The Normalised Banzhaf Index of power measures:
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.



14The main reason that the 2004 enlargement of the EU would have reduced decision-making efficiency is:
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.



15If one defines legitimacy as equal power per EU citizen, the allocation of votes in the Council of Ministers:
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.



16External trade policy is an exclusive competency of the EU; this is justified in the theory of fiscal federalism by:
A)scale economies
B)local preferences and informational advantages
C)negative spillovers
D)None of the above.



17In 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 ___________.
A)homogeneous (the same, or similar), important (high, or big)
B)polarized, small
C)homogenous, small
D)None of the above.



18Under the pre-2004-enlarge system of voting in the Council of Ministers, large countries have more votes than small nations. Is their voting power more or less than population proportionality would suggest?







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