Why do governments employ inefficient policies to redistribute income towards special interest groups (SIGs) when more efficient ones are available? To address this puzzle we derive and test predictions for a set of policies where detailed data is available and an efficiency ranking is feasible:...

This paper presents a model of information and political regime change. If enough citizens act against a regime, it is overthrown. Citizens are imperfectly informed about how hard this will be and the regime can, at a cost, engage in propaganda so that at face-value it seems hard. This...

Among political practitioners, there is conventional wisdom about the outcomes of critical and salient legislative votes. 'This vote,' we hear, ' will either win by a little or lose by a lot.' Real-world examples suggest coalition leaders purchase 'hip-pocket' votes and "if you need me" pledges,...

Global games of regime change -- that is, coordination games of incomplete information in which a status quo is abandoned once a sufficiently large fraction of agents attacks it -- have been used to study crises phenomena such as currency attacks, bank runs, debt crises, and political change. We...

Bribes by firms in Indonesia arise principally from regulations --licenses and levies --imposed by local government officials. Regulations generate direct revenues (fees) plus indirect revenues in the form of bribes. The expected value of the latter is capitalized into lower salaries needed by...

This paper employs a novel data set on lobbying expenditures to measure the degree of within-sector political organization and to explore the determinants of the mode of lobbying and political organization across U.S. industries. The data show that sectors characterized by a higher degree of...

What makes a good leader? A good leader is able to coordinate his followers around a credible mission statement, which communicates the future course of action of the organization. In practice, leaders learn about the best course of action for the organization over time. While learning helps...

A novel experiment is used to show that the effect of a policy on the level of cooperation is greater when it is chosen democratically by the subjects than when it is exogenously imposed. In contrast to the previous literature, our experimental design allows us to control for selection effects...

Observed fiscal policy varies greatly across time and countries. How can we explain this variation across time and countries? This paper surveys the recent literature that has tried to answer this question. We adopt a unified approach in portraying public policy as the equilibrium outcome of an...

Localities in developed countries often restrict construction and population growth through regulations governing land usage, lot sizes, building heights, and frontage requirements. In developing countries, such policies are less effective because of the existence of unregulated, informal...