very qui t'a la rocha sono sempre it's a great pleasure having you all here as often sits in the front rows are pretty empty it's always been like that but anyway no no seats are reserved so if you're sitting in the back or if you're standing feel feel free to come to the front and sit down in the first row so that you can follow the next event now I have to tell you that it's a great pleasure I am very pleasure I am very happy to see that mr. Eric masking has accepted our invitation the our audience the squirrel audience already had the great privilege two years ago to listen to Eric masking on hyperbolic discounting that is to say the our trend that we have to delay and postpone and put off if you remember it's been it was a memorable presentation and for those of you who did not have the opportunity to listen to it a couple of years ago well it is still available on the website and you can have a look at the slide and you can listen to the event in streaming mode now you may remember that two years ago it actually had been introduced by Sandra Brusco so I don't want to dwell upon things that have were already told but he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2007 and he was awarded when he was living in the Einstein building now I don't think if I don't know whether there's a direct link or not between the faculty was living in the same house where Albert Einstein's lived but I am not aware of other people who lived in that house and then were awarded a Nobel Prize but anyway there's something else that somebody told me yesterday on the way to Trento and which is distinctive of Eric masking that is that during the Halloween celebration I used to dress as Einstein maybe it was in an effort to increase the likelihood of being awarded the the award anyway it was just a joke Eric masking contributed very very much to the theory of economics with the theory of the design of mechanisms on which of which thunder Brusco spoke a lot two years ago in sandro Brusco studied this theory in depth but professor masking also contributed to contributed with several different theories especially with the theory of games and in particular there's a specific contribution so it is not an award for the career but looking at the CV at the resume of Eric masking we can see that he really wrote over 122 papers and publications on top-level scientific magazines and books just to give you an idea that it is very difficult to publish on those magazine when you want to recruit PhD students abroad usually there is a span of time usually six or seven years in which these scholars are recruited and they work at university and only after six or seven years they they it is then decided whether they are given a tenure or not now giving a tenure or not you should have at least one paper in one of the top publications or journals of the of the sector now seven years for one with mr. Moskin we have over one hundred and twenty two it would take an average person it would take like over seven hundred years of life to have the same productivity as Professor masking his research has always been focused on the need to promote incentives when you delegate some authority to the third party so there is no dark decision but there is a relationship between main agent and you have to give incentive so that these people behave and behave properly well this theory this approach is fundamental to solve the fundamental to tackle the fundamental problem that we are dealing with with this year event so we are here to discuss about the ruling class how to improve the rules they have to come to complied with by the ruling class and since we are delegating responsibility to the persons in command to our representatives I mean we are in a democracy so we cannot decide independently inevitably we end up delegating some of our powers with few exceptions like Switzerland where people are called upon through referendums to to end can have a direct say on some specific things but usually we are in representative democracies where by the authority are entrusted with a part of our power and when we delegate we need rules and we need specific schemes so that the people that are given these powers will for sure pursue the common good and the common welfare this is the title of this year festival of economics and it's one of the topic that has always been at this centre of Eric maskings works today he will focus on accountability dealing with public officials the ruling class there is the problem of accountability and professor masking will tell us how true and how important it is that there is accountability up to a certain level because an excessive accountability may be counterproductive if these people are made to accountable they may actually forget about the needs of minorities because I have to make the majority happy and at the same time they cannot simply be like followers that like follow just general trends or general fads now this may sound a bit abstract but there is a lot there are many practical implications and he will now be given the floor for 45 minutes and then or of course he will be more than ready to reply to some of your questions I know and then this event will close at 15 at 6 and 15 minutes so that there is time to go to the following debate so please you have the floor thank you very much for that warm welcome thank you Tito for the introduction it's a great pleasure to be back in Trento it's a great pleasure to be back in this magnificent room so as as Tito said the the subjects of my talk today is how accountable public officials should be and I should say that what I'm going to be talking about is actually based on on some research that I've done in collaboration with the French economist jean tirole I don't have to tell you that the idea behind democratic governments is that public decisions decisions that are taken on behalf of the entire society should reflect what people in that society actually wants but we're the few exceptions and Tito mentions direct referenda as are conducted in Switzerland's it's rare that decisions are taken directly by the public usually what happens is that we that we the public delegate the authority to take public decisions to representatives to government officials and there's a good reason for that after all these representatives are spending basically all their time on governing it's expected that they will have the expertise the knowledge and the incentive to act carefully and with due consideration for the public welfare after all individual citizens particularly in a large in in a large country have very little effects on public decisions an individual citizen only will have a tiny effect on an overall outcome and therefore individual citizens don't have typically much incentive to learn about the issues at hand in detail the the the famous economist joseph schumpeter once said in his typically cynical way that citizens have about as much interests as much incentive to master a political problem actually less incentive to put into considering a political question than they do playing a game of bridge so it's understandable that citizens will want to delegate the authority to make public decisions to representatives but what gives representatives the incentive to act to take good decisions to act well on behalf of the public well I'm going to suppose that there are two motivations the first is that public officials do want to be remembered favourably they want to to have a legacy that future generations will will look back on but we know that this legacy motivation is not always sufficient to induce officials to to act on behalf of citizens and that's why in democratic societies we we often require citizens to be reevaluated periodically that is we we insist that they run for re-election or that they at least be reevaluated for reappointments in other words we want to make them accountable for their decisions and the reason why that that works what why running for reelection provides motivation to officials is because officials want to hold office there there are advantages so holding office that that private citizens don't have so these - these are the two motivations that I will consider the desire to leave a legacy the desire to hold office to be too real to be re-elected now you might ask well why doesn't really that the requiring re-election provide sufficient incentive to get officials to to do the right thing there are of course some advantages to requiring officials to run for re-election one is that an official may be looking ahead to the next election and an official might try to do things that will please the public and that may induce him to to make good decisions and if he makes bad decisions well the public has the opportunity to kick him out if if an officials own motives are not in line with what the public wants they they can they can vote for someone else but there's there's a drawback to accountability there's a drawback to the election system which is well they're two of them that I want to mention today the first is that's if if you're an official who wants to get reelected you may simply take the popular way out you know what the the public wants you do it even if you understand that that decision is not in the long term public interest in other words you may pander to public opinion just to get just to get reelected as I as I started by saying that the the the main reason we want representative government is because we think officials might do a better job making decisions than individual citizens but if all of the officials are doing is pandering to public opinion well we're losing the the main reason we wanted representative government in the first place so that's that's a drawback of accountability and the second drawback is that if the public is not a homogeneous body if if there are various minority interests officials may not have the incentive to take into account these minority and for if there if if they want to get reelected because after all it's a majority who were going to reelect these officials so losing sight of minority interests is also a potential drawback of the election system so if we were designing the rules for our society in an optimal way we would want to take into account both the benefits and the drawbacks of accountability some decisions would be delegated to officials who are accountable but perhaps some decisions some other decisions would be delegated to officials who are less accountable and that's what I want to talk about today in particular I want to talk about three different ways of organizing governments organizing public decisions the first is the idea going that goes back to ancient Greece the idea of direct democracy where the public decides directly what public policy should be call that direct democracy the second is what I'll call representative democracy where we give the power to decide so officials and those officials are subject to re-election and the third possibility is to give some decision-making power to officials who are not subject to re-election I'll call this judicial power in many countries judges who are after all public officials are typically not subject to reelection in the United States for example federal judges are appointed for life and and there may be a good reason for that so those are the three possibilities and I wanted to decide which I I want to look at the question of which decision should be decided by which of the but by the the three alternatives that I've described direct democracy representative democracy judicial power and the considerations involved will be first how good is the public in figuring out for it on its own what the right decision is and in some cases it it seems perfectly alright to let the public decide directly how good is the public at identifying officials who will act in their interest an important question is how much can we expect the public to learn after a public decision has been taken about how good that decision was how much an official wants to be reelected is is obviously important in deciding whether or not we should subject officials to to re-election and then finally the extent to which society is homogeneous or heterogeneous but and by heterogeneous I mean made up of minority interests that may have to be protected so though those are the those are the five considerations that will determine which decisions should be allocated to which of the of the three possibilities that I have that I may have laid out for you now this is an economics festool and I'm I'm an economist and so what I'd like to do this afternoon is to show you a little bit about how an economist would go about analyzing this problem and the way that we we do this is by constructing a simplified version of reality in other words a model and I'm going to lay out a little model for you which will I hope shed some light on on these issues so here is the basic model there are going to be two time periods two decisions to be taken in the in the first time period someone is going to have to decide whether to choose a or b and in the second period there's a similar choice between A or B I'm going to use a and B to describe the decisions in both periods but they don't aim B in the first period don't have to be the same as in the second period in the first version of the model I'm going to suppose that the public is homogeneous so ever all all citizens are the same and so we don't have to worry about minority interests now we'll suppose that every time a right decision is made that's good for the public the public gets a positive payoff from from that correct decision in fact we'll suppose that the payoff is equal to one economists like to quantify things so we'll suppose that the public gets a payoff of one from each right decision and a payoff of zero from each wrong decision and in every period we'll suppose that the public thinks that the probability that decision a is the correct choice is P so the public doesn't know for sure what the right decision is the probability that a is the right decision is is some P which is might be 60% it might be 80% we'll suppose that it's more than 1/2 more than 50% so so in other words a is the popular choice it's the choice that the public would make if it were up to the public to the side and you can think of P the the the probability that a is the right choice as a measure of home of the how much the public knows if if P is very close to fifty percent then the public doesn't really know very much a could be the right choice B could be the right choice the public doesn't really know if P is close to one though that's the case where the public really does know a lot and perhaps that's the case where the public should be deciding directly what to do well if the Constitution for for our hypothetical country allocates the decision between a and B to the public well then the public will choose a because that's the popular choice but if the Constitution specifies that an official makes the decision and the public chooses the official then we'll suppose that the outcome depends on how likely it is that the official is acting in the interest of the public remember I'm supposing that officials want to leave a legacy what an officials idea of a good legacy may be very different from the public's idea of a good legacy we'll suppose that there's some chance a probability pie that the official and the public think the same way that the official and the public are congruent but there's also a probability that the officials ideas of what is good for society are very different from what is in reality good for society that's so there's a probability one minus PI that the official is non congruence with the public now we'll suppose that the that because officials specialize in making public decisions they actually know what action is best for them and for society the public only knows with probability P officials know with probability one what the right action is that doesn't mean that they're going to take it because they may have different objectives but they but they at least have the knowledge will suppose that an officials payoff depends on the decision she takes she gets a positive payoff from from taking an action that that she would like to take and a zero payoff from choosing the other action she also gets a payoff from being in office so we'll suppose that if the official makes the decision then after the first period where the official is chosen between a and B the public finds out not necessarily for certain but with some probability whether that first period decision was correct or not so that's the probability Q that the first period decision was correct but with some probability 1 minus Q the public doesn't find out now the value of Q that the probability that the that the public learns whether the first period decision is correct will typically depends on things like how diligence the press is at providing information that the the the the more independent and the more vigorous is is the art are journalists in a particular country the more likely Q is to to take a high value now depending on who gets to make the decision the first period official can can either run for reelection if that's what the Constitution requires and if she loses she'll be replaced by some other official or if if we're talking about non accountable officials officials who don't have to run for re-election the the official will stay in office and take a decision in the second period so what I want to do is to analyze the the outcomes of our three possibilities direct democracy representative democracy and judicial power and I want to evaluate them from the point of view of the payoffs that the public gets and I want to look at two cases the first case is where the public gets essentially no information about the quality of the first period decision sometimes we don't know for many years whether an official's decision was a good one or not if we if we look particularly at long-term investments it may be it may be many years before we find we find out whether or not a particular bet on energy developments was wise or not so I want to look first at the case where the public doesn't get much information about the quality of the period decision by the time an official is up for re-election so in that case if the public were choosing between a or B itself everything would turn on the probability P that a is the right decision remember I said that the public itself thinks that decision a is the right one and and public is correct with probability P so if everything were decided by direct democracy the public would get a payoff of 1 times P in the first period that's its expected payoff its average payoff in the first period and another 1 times P in the second period for a total of of 2p so 2p is the payoff from temeka from direct democracy what what if we're looking at the case of judicial power where an official is put into office for two periods does not have to run for reelection well then everything turns on the probability pie that the official is congruence with the public remember the the official knows what the right decision is but may not have interests that are the same as the public's probably the the probability is PI that the official views things the same way that the public does were wants to take the same decisions that the public would take if the public knew what the right decision was and so in this case the payoff to to the public will be PI each period or a total of two pi and then the last case to consider is representative democracy in which an official has to run for re-election after the first period now in order to analyze representative democracy we have to say what is what is the primary motivation for an official that does the official care mostly about her legacy or being reelected if she cares about being reelected which I which I will consider first then she's going to choose the popular decision in other words she's going to pander to public opinion she's going to choose a because that will please the public that will get her reelected now once she's reelected she can do what she wants so in the second period she will choose the the decision which which pleases her the most so in the case of representative democracy the public will get a payoff of P in the first period because the the official will be pandering and a payoff of Pi the second period because in the second period the official will be doing what what she wants and the probability that that's good for the public is is pi well - we've now looked at the at the payoffs for our for our three different forms of governments and we get two P for direct democracy two pi for judicial power and P plus PI for representative democracy now it's if you think about this for for a little bit you'll see that direct democracy or judicial power one or the other of them must be better than representative democracy because e-either P is bigger than pi either direct democracy it is is better than representative democracy or pi is bigger than P in which case judicial power is better than representative democracy so in the in the case where officials just wanted to get reelected and they don't care sufficiently about legacy representative democracy is a bad idea at least in in in this case where the public finds out it's very little about whether the first period decision was good or not so basically it's a choice between judicial power or direct democracy if pi is bigger than p judicial power is better if P is bigger than pi direct democracy is better but now I want to look at the case where an official is primarily motivated not by the desire to be reelected but by how future generations will look back I'm not officially in other words but by her legacy and now the analysis is quite different now an official will not pander to public opinion in the first period she realizes she might not be reelected but she cares mostly about what's but how she will be remembered once she leaves office so in this case she might choose decision a but only if if she thinks it's the the best choice so she'll be reelected if if she chooses a she'll be thrown out of office if she chooses B and I'm not going to go through the the the math those of you who are interested in it can can studying study it for yourself at your leisure but I wanted to point out that now representative democracy will be better than judicial power under judge under judicial power where you appoints a an official for two periods and can't get her out after the first period there is a risk that you will appoint someone who is not taking decisions in the in the public interest and there's nothing you can do about that at least under representative democracy you have some chance of identifying a non congruent official now you don't know for sure whether officials are congruent or non congruent because of because the public doesn't know whether the decisions that these officials are making are actually good decisions or not all they can do is evaluate officials by whether they're taking the popular decision or not but at least the the public has a chance of getting rid of an official who is non congruence and that means that representative democracy will lead to a higher payoff than judicial power and so now we have a a comparison of representative democracy with direct democracy which gives representative democracy the edge in more cases and judicial power is out of the picture altogether representative democracy is is clearly going to be better than appointing an official for two periods without reelection now when when is it likely that this edge that representative democracy potentially has will will actually be realized well I would argue that's for particularly important decisions where for decisions which are likely to have effects lasting many years the legacy motive is probably going to be especially strong so for important decisions it we're probably better off as a society assigning those decisions to politicians who have to run for re-election because because those are the ones those are the sorts of officials who are likely to both care about legacy and be congruence to be congruent with what society wants because the the because the public has the opportunity of getting rid of the politician after the first period but not but not the judge not not the official who's in office for two periods so important decisions should be assigned to politicians who are subjects to re-election now I've been assuming to this point that officials officials decisions are not learned to be correct or not perhaps for many years so in the analysis up to now officials don't directly act in order to to raise the payoff of of the public they act on their officials act on their own behalf because the public is not going to find out in time for for the reelection whether or not the the decision was correct or not but but I now want to to turn to the case where the public might find out whether the first period decision was correct and will will see that this this enriches the analysis this complicates the analysis so will suppose that with with some probability the public does learn whether the first period decision was correct perhaps because journalists have studied the question meant and have reported their own analysis to to the public now direct democracy and judicial power are completely unaffected by by the possibility that the public learns whether the first first period decision was was correct or not but but representative democracy is is definitely affected by this possibility and in fact if there's a PI enough probability that the public finds out what's whether the first period decision was correct or not we now have a new possibility which is what I'll call forward-looking pandering forward-looking pandering is where in the first period the official chooses the right alternative because she knows that there's a reasonable probability that by the time she runs for re-election the public will have discovered whether whether this first period decision was was right or not so she would she will do the right thing now it's true that she's she's pandering but she's not pandering to public opinion she's pandering to informed analysis that she knows will be available by the time that she runs for reelection so that this is quite different from what I was calling pandering before and in fact with this kind of pandering forward-looking pandering officials will do the right thing regardless of their preferences now that doesn't mean that they will be reelected because it may it may still be the case that the public doesn't find out whether whether the decision was correct although once opposing that queue the probability that the public finds out is is positive it still might not be one and so in that case the the public will reelect the official only if the official took that is the decision the public initially thought was was correct in other words that the the popular choice so what I have shown you today is that there are two ways in which making public officials accountable might improve welfare might improve the payoff that the public gets if officials don't care that much about me being reelected they care more about their legacy then officials will do what they think is right and in this case representative democracy is is desirable because it gives the public a chance to throw out officials whose views of what is right may not be congruent with that of society and when when officials care mostly about getting reelected rather than like I say we still might have good outcomes with with representative democracy if the public has a reasonable chance of finding out by the time of re-election whether the the public decisions were were correct or not so either way we're with a week really reelection motive or a strong reelection motive there are cases where representative democracy is is good for Public Welfare let me talk very briefly about the case where the public may not be homogeneous so so I've been concentrating so far on a world where all voters are the same all citizens are the same but what if we can divide up the public between a majority and a minority let's look at us at a simple world where the majority knows what action is best for it's and the minority also knows which action is best for for the minority group but those actions are different so the majority would like to take action a the minority would like to take action B and we'll suppose that some of the time it's it's proper for the majority's interests to outweigh the minorities but with the remaining probability we would we would like to give more weight to the minority well how does this change the analysis well now we should really think of there being three kinds of officials there are officials who are congruent with the majority there are officials who are congruent with the minority and their officials who are in between there they're congruent with some average of what majority wants in the minority wants in other words they're congruent with overall Society now under direct democracy where we we allow the society the citizens of a society to make decisions directly the majority always prevails they outnumber them so they always get their choice which is which is outcome a so under Domecq direct democracy the minorities interests are completely ignored under judicial power well it's going to depend on what kind of official we have it is Assen official who's congruent with the majority of official who's congruent with minority or some combination underrepresented with democracy it will also depend on what kind of official we have but now officials have to run for for reelection and so now and if we have a situation where officials who choose the popular action a get reelected officials who choose the unpopular action be are thrown out so representative democracy is going to tend to favor majority interests more than men judicial power where a minority congruence official gets to stay in office for for two periods so if there's a high chance that's minority interests outweigh majority interests then judicial power might actually be better for society than representative democracy for intermediate cases where the chance that's minority interests out--we majority interest is only moderate then representative democracy is optimal and in the case where a majority interests are extremely likely to outweigh minority interest then then direct democracy is best but let me let me let me close with one implication of this analysis which is that what we might like to try to set up is some kind of separation of powers we might like to have simultaneously some officials who are accountable and other officials who are not accountable depending and and and and we want to assign decisions to the accountable or non accountable decisions depending on how likely it is that minority interests will be dominating suppose that we had a suppose we had an indication that minority interests were very important well those decisions we would like to have taken by judges by by unaccountable officials and that that's for that's precisely the kind of system that we have in in many democracies around the world if there is indication that's a minority a minorities rights are likely to be violated many democracies take the final decision out of the hands of the elected officials and put the final decision in the hands of courts and and the the logic for doing that is exactly the one that I've laid out that we expect that unaccountable decision unaccountable officials judges are more likely to take into account the minorities interests than the than the majorities when those minority interests are particularly when those minority interests are particularly important so that's an indication of the kind of conclusion about democratic societies that this sort of analysis can yield I hope that this brief introduction to the economic analysis of democratic constitutions perhaps wets your appetites for going into the matter further and with that observation let me thank you for your attention who maybe de Chivo who does it as I told you this was a rather abstract presentation where in a simplified way as economists often do well economists simplify issues which in fact are extremely important so here we have presentation a simplified presentation of focusing on three pillars at P and P and Q and the measure of these parameters shows what system works better now this type of reasoning which simplifies a very complex rely reality is very useful to understand very complex issues let's speak about the experience of government Monte here in Italy in that case we delegated some people it was like judges because those were non accountable people mr. Monty was life senator so he had no problems of being re-elected and his government was not subjected to any assessment to any reelection so we may think that behind that choice there was the idea that we were in a situation where people could not know what choices we're best and where P that is the awareness about the right decisions to be taken was very low and we're these people who were given the office actually who were appointed in government in fact we're congruent and in line with the right decision but then we know that different things that happen because government in the end decided to be related and that changed the history another example chancroid Jean Kerr who perhaps will be the next European Commissioner or head of the Commission well Jean Kerr there is a famous sentence where he says politicians know very well what things that have to be done but they do not know how to be reelected after making those choices after taking those decisions so that's a justification and an excuse that politicians very often use in order not to do what they should do the factor that I have low pies instead of having a queue close to zero but probably there are other ways in order for our representative democracies to flourish better that is for example to give better information and this is exactly what we try to do in this festival so that we spread the news with spread information with spread knowledge so that we know if the choices and the actions taken are the right one that is just to say that the things discussed here may seem abstract but in fact they are very important now we don't have a lot of time for questions but let's have a couple of questions please speak in the microphone no sorry it's me I decided who tastes the flora sorry what's your opinion about term limits your model is set up as if the world a term limit at the end of the second term and second question you assume that politicians do not learn by doing their job but they actually do we don't know if they actually learned something good while being in power on power or if they actually build up a competence for building up entry barriers so how would your model be complicated by this issue I didn't have a chance to talk about term limits that is something that that we've looked into in detail in in this very simple model that the model as I laid it out there actually is no advantage to to term limits because I'm assuming that that the public gets a payoff of of one for each correct decision payoff of zero for each incorrect decision and that's the end of the story but in a more complicated model where we're a richer set of outcomes as possible term limits might be desirable as a way of limiting risk so so what so one difficulty with with putting a politician into office for for a very long period of time whether it's through a long term appointment or through many reelection zhh is that that politician will be taking decisions which prove in the long run to be disastrous for society tournaments are a way of limiting that risk now you you also asked what what about learning by doing on the part of politicians do they get better when they've had more experience and that's also something that that we've looked in so I didn't talk about I didn't talk today about how long these periods are but in fact you don't want to have periods that are too short because within a very short period a politician doesn't have the chance to develop her skills so so the the period length that I would that I was taking as given today itself is subject so to choice in in the Constitution on the one hand we don't want it too short because then we'll be having re-elections before politicians have fully developed on the other hand we don't want it to be too long because then we run the risk of having politicians in office who are very non congruence with Society so the period length itself will be determined by they by the Constitution yeah buddy Tim well in Italy in the past two years a movement a political movement has been pretty successful and that movement believes that direct democracy is very important it is indeed the future of our country and they think that the introduction of technologies and presumed greater awareness of the public and also the possibility of expressing one's own vote through the internet well they think this political movement believes that this is very important and this is the future of this society what do you think about this do you think that this could improve direct democracy modern technology certainly make it easier for the public to express their views I'm not fully convinced that modern technology may ensures that the views that the public expresses are terribly well informed III think that the the main risk with direct democracy is that the incentive for the individual citizen to really become well educated when it comes to political decisions is is is pretty low we because elections are not held every day we we might educate ourselves about politicians and and and have reasonably well-informed viewers about whom to elect but if we had to take political decisions every day the way politicians do we would be overwhelmed and modern technology is not going to solve that problem in the end I think for for a large society to function well many of the decisions are going to have to be delegated to representatives to more question I think we can take two more down there yes thank you for this great great opportunity to understand better the public affairs I would like to ask you a little thing if nowadays lots of people that knows nothing about politics about Foreign Affairs about this this model or this theory how can we implement in their head the idea of a good government of the of the multitude of other people that think in the same way but never knows this model or other other thing like this if I understand your your question correctly after that it sounds as though you are you're you're asking about direct democracy versus representative democracy if most people are not terribly well-informed or if a lot of people are not terribly well-informed about political decisions public public decisions then it's only through representative democracy that we have a reasonable hope for decisions being correct now why should representatives take the right decision well I was arguing that they want to leave a legacy and I think that that that can be a that can be a powerful motivation and in and in countries where the the press does its job representatives are also given the incentive to act on behalf of of the public because if they don't they'll be exposed by by journalists so so either so either way through legacy or through this parameter Q the the possibility that that the public will find out whether the politicians have been doing their job where we're usually going to be better off where with representatives making the decisions rather than the public making those decisions directly multimode Amanda Apprendi Emmeline Fonda Sara Cora microphone please I like the model how elegant it is and it has some emerging dynamics which is which are quite interesting from the few number of parameters but what is missing in my opinion and I would like to ask you how that would be implementable is the political competition so how can political competition emerging this model where officials are emoji knows and since I think I think this is what is determining political the polity their actual politics in Italy so it's all about that competition which is missing you're right another simplification actually a oversimplification of this model is that the only point at which competition comes into the picture is at the time of reelection where either the current politician gets back into office for another term or some other politician takes her place but in in reality political competition gives us more than the opportunity to replace current politicians with other politicians it it gives us it gives the public a chance to choose between different ideologies no I didn't have time so to get into ideological competition today that would not of course that that's that's extremely important for for actual democracy but it it doesn't affect any of the conclusions that I was drawing from this analysis and that's why for for matters of simplicity the key to keep the model manageable I kept ideological competition out well thank you so much I'm sure we have many other questions to ask but unfortunately the time is is over some of you also want to go to the aviary vent that will follow shortly really thank you so much for this great like children you