Recent events in the global economy have caused many writers to argue that the market is driven by animal spirits, by irrational exuberance or speculation. At the same time, the economic downturn has apparently caused many voters in the United States, and other countries, to change their opinion...

The key theoretical idea in this paper is that activist groups contribute resources to their favored parties in response to policy concessions from the parties. These resources are then used by a party to enhance the leader’s valence — the electoral perception of the quality of the party...

We develop a stochastic model of electoral competition in order to study the economic and political determinants of trade policy. We model a small open economy with two tradable goods, each of which is produced using a sector specific factor (e.g., land and capital) and another factor that is...