This paper shows why a majority of legislators may vote for a policy that benefits a firm but harms all legislators. The firm may induce legislators to support the policy by suggesting that it is more likely to invest in a district whose voters or representative support the policy. In...

Taking a political economy perspective this paper proposes an alternative carbon abatement policy instrument with significant advantages over existing policy instruments. The key feature of the proposed carbon securities is that they entitle their owners to a fixed proportion of ex ante unknown...

We develop a dynamic spatial model in which heterogeneous workers are imperfectly mobile and forward-looking and yet all structural fundamentals can be inverted without assuming that the economy is in a stationary spatial equilibrium. Exploiting this novel feature of the model, we show that the...

We exploit the precise timing of natural disasters to provide empirical evidence on the connection between electoral accountability and politicians’ support for special interests. We show that, in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, the evening news substantially reduce their coverage of...

Firms often try to influence individuals that, like regulators, are tasked with advising or deciding on behalf of a third party. In a dynamic regulatory setting, we show that a firm may prefer to capture regulators through the promise of a lucrative future job opportunity (i.e., the...