We analyze the topical question of how the compensation of elected politicians affects the set of citizens choosing to run. To this end, we develop a sparse and tractable citizen-candidate model of representative democracy with ability differences, informative campaigning and political parties....

Focusing on emerging market currency arrangements, we build a model of an exchange rate peg with escape clauses and output persistence. We first show how output persistence works as an additional 'fundamental' so that an exogenous increase in persistence can make the currency peg more vulnerable...

Financial integration in some segments of the financial markets started to deteriorate during the recent period of economic turmoil in Europe. This paper examines whether this phenomenon also holds true for the European retail payments market. In comparison with other segments of the financial...

It is commonly thought that an open economy can accommodate output shocks through either exchange rate or real sector adjustments. We formalise this notion by incorporating labour market rigidities into an “escape clause” model of currency crises. We show that the absence of structural...

Financial integration in some segments of the financial markets started to deteriorate during the recent period of economic turmoil in Europe. This paper examines whether this phenomenon also holds true for the European retail payments market. In comparison with other segments of the financial...

We present a theory on migration of dual-earner couples and test it in the context of international migration. Our model predicts that the probability that a couple emigrates increases in the home-country earnings of the primary earner. The effect of the home-country earnings of the secondary...

We study the effects of immigration on native welfare in a general equilibrium model featuring two skill types, search frictions, wage bargaining, and a redistributive welfare state. Our quantitative analysis suggests that, in all 20 countries studied, immigration attenuates the effects of...

We argue that anti-corruption laws may provide an efficiency rationale for why political parties should meddle in the distribution of political nominations and government contracts. Anticorruption laws forbid trade in spoils that politicians distribute. However, citizens may pay for gaining...

Using data from 1960-2000 for OECD countries, we analyze the impact of compulsory military service on the demand for higher education, measured by students enrolled in tertiary education as a share of the working-age population. Based on a theoretical model, we hypothesize that military draft...

Following a seminal contribution by Borjas (1987), a large literature has analyzed how income distribution and redistribution are related to immigration to various rich countries. In this paper, we take a look at the other side of the coin. We analyze emigration from Denmark, which is one of the...