Abstract: Initially, voting rights were limited to wealthy elites providing political support for stock markets. The franchise expansion induces the median voter to provide political support for banking development as this new electorate has lower financial holdings and benefits less from the...

This paper analyses the political constraints of intergenerational risk sharing. The rst result is that the political process generally does not lead to ex ante optimal insurance. The second result is that in a second best political setting PAYG still contributes to intergenerational risk...

This paper proposes that reforms by vote-seeking governments and the existence of reform-adverse voters are logically compatible. This results from a commitment problem on the part of voters. Due to economic voting voters cannot credibly commit to reelect a non-reforming government during a...

This paper considers the political economy of the mix of profit, investment and saving taxation in a small open economy where agents generally differ in their shares of profit and other income.In this setting, capital income taxation can have the dual role of financing government spending and of...

Abstract: Analyzing 30 OECD-countries in 1980-2005, this paper documents the effect of an aging electorate on pension expenditure. The first outcome is that an increase in the age of the median voter leads to less generous pension benefits. The second outcome is that an older median voter is not...

The 'noise trader' model of De Long et al. provides a plausible account of the determination of the equity premium.Extension of the model to allow for privatization of publicly-owned assets yields insights into the positive political economy of privatization and into the normative question of...