This paper contrasts the incentives for cronyism in business, the public sector and politics within an agency problem model with moral hazard. The analysis is focused on the institutional differences between private, public and political organizations. In business, when facing a residual...

This paper studies party discipline in a congress within a political agency framework with retrospective voting. Party discipline serves as an incentive device to induce office-motivated congress members to perform in line with the party leadership's objective of controlling both the executive...

This paper analyzes a spatial model of political competition between two policy-motivated parties in hard times of crisis. Hard times are modeled in terms of policy-making costs carried by a newly elected party. The results predict policy divergence in equilibrium. If the ideological preferences...

This paper analyzes endogenous lobbying over a unidimensional policy issue. Individuals differ in policy preferences and decide either to join one of two opposite interest lobbies or not to take part in lobbying activities. Once formed, lobbies make contributions to the incumbent government in...

This paper analyzes provision of a differentiated public good within an organization. A moderate principal assigns a public good production to one of two extreme agents. A contributing agent then gets the opportunity to choose a public good variety he prefers but has to carry a cost of...

This paper provides a rationale for intra-party democracy within a political agency model with moral hazard. The focus is on the party's internal procedures for policy determination. I show that democratizing those procedures benefits the party leadership, which seeks to maximize joint...

This paper studies the relationship between party discipline and discretionary spending with theory and data. We propose a theoretical model in which a politician faces a conflict between her constituents' interests and the party line. Party loyalty is electorally costly for the politician and...

A child's family structure is a fundamental determinant of future well-being, making it essential to understand how public policies affect the involvement of fathers. In this paper, we exploit a reform of the German parental leave system - which increased mother's income and reduced legal...

This paper studies the relationship between incumbents’ performance and political polarization, both with theory and data. The theory is based on a spatial model of political competition in which the voters use the incumbent’s performance in office to update their beliefs about his...