We consider an economy where competing political parties alternate in office. Due to rent-seeking motives, incumbents have an incentive to set public expenditures above the socially optimum level. Parties cannot commit to future policies, but they can forge a political compromise where each...

This paper investigates political uncertainty as a source of regulatory risk. It shows that political parties have incentives to reduce regulatory risk actively: Mutually beneficial pre-electoral agreements that reduce regulatory risk always exist. Agreements that fully eliminate it exist when...

Multinational institutions face an important trade-off when hiring personnel. On the one hand, hiring decisions are based, as in most organizations, on a candidate's professional qualifications. On the other hand, multinational institutions often aim for broad national representation. Reviewing...

The future consequences of climate change are highly uncertain. Today, the exact size of possible future damages are widely unknown. Governments try to cope with these risks by investing in mitigation and adaptation measures. Mitigation aims at a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions whereas...

No voters cast their votes based on perfect information, but better educated and richer voters are on average better informed than others. We develop a model where the voting mistakes resulting from low political knowledge reduce the weight of poor voters, and cause parties to choose political...

The existing literature has shown that special interest groups can have both growth enhancing and retarding effects on an economy. In either case it is always assumed that the nature of the special interest groups remains constant over time. The hypothesis of this paper is that a dynamic...

Using voting data from the Bank of England, we show that different individual assessments of the economy strongly influence votes after controlling for individual policy preferences. We estimate that internal members form more precise assessments than externals and are also more hawkish, though...