This study explains the observed repeated personal interactions between lobbyists and policymakers. The analysis uses a dynamic model of commercial lobbying in which citizens may hire lobbyists to present policy proposals on their behalf to policymakers. It is shown that repeated interactions...

In a country with weak institutional constraints on the executive, the real power might belong to the government bureaucracy rather than to an autocratic leader. We combine the Aghion-Tirole definition of formal and real authority with the Barro-Ferejohn model of political agency to study the...

In this paper we model the commercial lobbying industry (such as the so-called K-Street lobbyists of Washington, D.C.). In contrast to classical special interest groups commercial lobbying firms are not directly motivated by policy outcomes. They exist to make profits by selling intermediaries...

There is often a gap between the prescriptions of an “optimal” tax system and actual tax systems, some of which can be neither efficient economically nor efficient at redistributing income. With a focus on personal income taxes, this paper reviews the political economics literature on tax...

This study examines how quality of political institutions affects the distribution of government budget and how development of government spending in major sections shapes the political institutions in Iran. This question has become especially important due to recent international sanctions,...

We describe the evolution of the power struggle in Greece among key economic and political stakeholders, who have tried, via strategic positioning and rent-seeking activities, to influence economic policy outcomes during the postwar decades. We split the postwar decades in three periods: the...

We examine whether a corruption scandal in which the incumbent is implicated undermines trust in local government. We use a novel dataset containing information on local corruption scandals reported in Spain during the period 1999-2009, and data on the level of trust expressed in local...

Initially, voting rights were limited to wealthy elites providing political support for stock markets. The franchise expansion induces the median voter to provide political support for banking development as this new electorate has lower financial holdings and benefits less from the uncertainty...

This article analyses the dynamics of electoral promises, building on an electoral competition model with endogenous policies. It extends the Grossman-Helpman (1994) model [Grossman G., Helpman E. [1994], "Protection for sale", American Economic Review, 84, 4, 833-850] to include sanctions from...

In this paper we examine the empirical relevance of three prominent endogenous protection models. Is protection for sale, or do altruistic policy makers worry about political support? We find strong evidence that protection is indeed "for sale." The important new result is, however, that not...