There is a widespread view that the adjustment of U.S. trade prices--and hence merchandise trade flows--in the face of the substantial dollar depreciation since early 1985 has been slower than might have been expected. This paper examines the recent behavior of U.S. trade prices, and concludes...

This paper develops a political-economy model of the budget process focusing on the common pool problem of the public budget. We show that the externality arising from the fact that public spending tends to be targeted at individual groups in society while the tax burden is widely dispersed...