"Most empirical policy work requires the aggregation of policies. Trade policy aggregation exemplifies the aggregation problem poignantly, with thousands of highly dispersed trade barriers. This paper provides methods of policy aggregation that are consistent with two common objectives of...

"Much economic policy is deliberately shifted away from direct political processes to administrative processes - political pressure deflection. Pressure deflection poses a puzzle to standard political economy models which suggest that having policies to sell is valuable to politicians. The...