This paper evaluates the extent of regulation in a democracy with political corruption. Elected politicians can restrict entry of firms in exchange for bribes from entrepreneurs. Full liberalisation implies free entry and allocative efficiency and is supported by a majority of voters. Voters...

This paper presents an argument in favor of foreign lobbying. We show how foreign lobbying can help internalize cross national externalities and promote social objectives.

Most of the voting models restrict themselves to the analysis of symmetric equilibria, i.e. equilibria in which ‘similar’ voters make ‘similar’ voting decisions. In this paper we investigate this assumption under costly plurality voting. In any pure strategy equilibrium, if two active...

This paper's point of departure is that low-quality institutions, concentration of political power, and underdevelopment are persistent over time. Its analytical model views an equal distribution of political power as a commitment device to enhance institutional quality thereby promoting growth....

Rent seeking is often studied with reference to a contemporaneous rent evaluated at a point in time. We study the social cost of rent seeking when rents endure over time, but may have to be re-contested because of imperfect rent protection, or may disappear because of deregulation. The present...

This paper studies the costs and benefits of foreign lobbying. We show how and when foreign lobbying can help internalize cross national externalities. We argue that this is an often overlooked benefit of foreign lobbying. We also study under what conditions a constitutional rule banning foreign...

In a jury decision-making, individuals must compromise in order to reach a group consensus. If individuals compromise for non-rational reasons, such as a preference for conformity or due to erroneous information, then the final decision of the group may be biased. This paper presents original...

This paper provides a rationale for group support for political violence in situations where violence does not provide a material benefit. Rabin’s (1993) theory of fairness is adopted to demonstrate that although group violence may not be the equilibrium of a material game it may be a fairness...

We study the effect of electoral incentives on the allocation of public services across legislative districts. We develop a model in which elections encourage individual legislators to cater to parochial interests and thus aggravate the common pool problem. Using unique data from seven US...

We study Downsian competition in a Mirrleesian model of income taxation. The competing politicians may dier in competence. If politicians engage in vote-share maximization, the less competent politician's policy proposals are attractive to the minority of rich agents, whereas those of the...