The contribution of government transfer programs to inequality is often assessed by analyzing to what extent the benefits paid go to lower income families. Several analysts have found that some key government transfers actually go mostly to middle and high income families and thus contribute to...

The paper analyses the efficiency and the distributional effects of eliminating a tariff in a protected sector, in a Heckscher-Ohlin model of trade with costs of adjustment. The tariff can be eliminated at the onset or after a while. In case of postponing it the government may pre-announce the...

Benevolent governments lacking commitment ability provide too much insurance, if opportunistic private agents free ride on the government´s concern and exert too little effort expecting government assistance. Yet, the costs of implementing the transfer policy work as a commitment device,...

A long-standing concern in political economy is whether outcomes are efficient in political equilibrium. Recent contributions have examined the efficiency/inefficiency of policy choices from a theoretical point of view. The aim of this paper is to examine such issue empirically. Building on...

While economists have tended to focus on specific public policies when developing recommendations, the achievement of welfare objectives might depend more on the quality of policies than their content. This paper develops several measures of the qualities of policies across countries, arguing...