Stefan Napel
Professor
Contact:
tel. +49(0)921 55 2880
email. stefan.napel (at) uni-bayreuth.de
fax: +49(0)921 55 2889
home page
Research interests:
- Game theory, especially bargaining, measurement of power, and evolution
- Political economy of the European Union
- Inequality and social mobility
- Industrial organization
Project in PCRC:
Stefan Napel is working on several distinct projects related to voting and public choice. In one of them, he tries to quantify the legislative power which collective decision rules, e.g., for qualified majority voting (QMV) in the Council of the EU or co-legislation by Council, European Parliament and Commission, grant individual decision makers. This project?s main focus is the impact of strategic and procedural aspects of decision making rules on agents? a priori influence on policy.
A second project investigates normative principles for the design of two-tier voting systems. For instance, national governments can be seen as aggregating European citizens? preferences at a first level; these national preferences are then aggregated again by QMV in the Council. Both the current voting system for the Council and the future one based on the Treaty of Lisbon give greater voting weight to more populous member states ? but in quite different ways. Which system can be called more egalitarian? How would an ideal weight allocation look like for particular interpretations of the principle ?one person, one vote???
Stefan Napel is also working on selected conceptual issues concerning the measurement of power in voting bodies. In particular, he is investigating different notions of monotonicity of power measures when agents face exogenous communication structures.