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...

The paper applies an empirical model, based on the economic theory of public choice, to the Group of Seven countries. It is discovered: (a) that deficit financing does appear to contribute to increased real government spending; (b) that the demand for government services as a whole does not...

We examine the effects of oil rents on corruption and state stability exploiting the exogenous within-country variation of a new measure of oil rents for a panel of 31 oil-exporting countries during the period 1992 to 2005. We find that an increase in oil rents significantly increases...