Governments often establish economic policy in response to political pressure by interest groups. Since these groups' political activities may alter prices, economies so affected cannot be characterized by perfect competition. We develop a model of a "lobbying economy" in which consumers' choice...

A two sector general equilibrium model is developed in which households can influence the government's choice of the relative price of traded goods and the level of public goods supplied to each sector. The model is used to illustrate key problems addressed by the political economy literature,...

When economic actors are also allowed to become politically active, perhaps to influence a government price policy, they face decision problems with essentially simultaneous political and economic features. If, in addition, two groups struggle to pull the administered price level in opposite...

Suppose that members of a society are accorded status as both economic and political agents. If the polity responds to the same actors for whom economic policy matters, a simultaneity of political and economic determination is introduced. The first goal of the research presented here concerns...

Future Prospects For Minnesota County Government

Using an endogenous growth framework, this paper analyzes the impact of lobbying for public goods on the long run steady-state growth rate of the economy. A socially optimal level of lobbying can be found to exist in the absence of a social planner. Atomistic households, however, exceed this...

Despite much hard work in recent years, economics and political science remain largely separate disciplines. Few meaningful bridges have been build between them, and hence useful gains from intellectual trade between the two have not been realized. Some of the most recent efforts to construct...

Does democratization imply faster growth, less corruption and less inefficiency? Past studies yield ambiguous results on the effects of democracy on economic performance and growth. We develop a simple two-sector endogenous growth model that shows both very young and mature democracies grow...

A number of very careful econometric studies have been interpreted as showing that publicly funded research and development conducted by private firms has had little discernable impact on firm level profits or productivity. In contrast historical studies have shown that military and...