We expand the investigation of the role of Congress in explanations of government growth, building on the work of Kau and Rubin (2002). In addition to reconsidering the importance of the median ideological position of elected representatives they introduced, we allow for the roles of majority...

In this paper Engel-Granger time series methodology is used to combine trending economic variables with stationary political factors to search for well-defined political influences on central government budgets in Canada over the entire post-Confederation time period from 1870 to 2000. To...

This paper develops a model of two person family. Each family member attempts to maximize his or her own utility. Yet they are interdependent in two respects. Family members are interdependent, first of all, because they care about each other. Second, there are local public goods or household...

Taxation has been a much-discussed subject in the literature on economics and in writings on the role and meaning of the state. Over the centuries, many authors have put forward views of what qualifies as "good" taxation and what constitutes undesirable tax policy. Consensus on these issues has...

We consider the properties of a computable equilibrium model of a competitive polical economy in which the economic interests of groups of voters and their effective influcence on equilibrium policy outcomes can be explicitely distinguished and computed.

The basic question addressed in this chapter is “Who gets what in a marriage?” I begin with the observation that any marriage involves two individuals, each of whom has their own experience of that marriage. The focus is on the economic outcomes experienced by each partner, and the...