This paper analyzes the effect of population size on political participation and allocative efficiency. Increasing population is generally found to reduce political participation. However, since participation is not evenly spread throughout the population, this will have consequences for...

This paper analyzes the interaction between ideological shirking by legislators and interest group activities in a two stage game between a legislator, a challenger, and an interest group. Some comparative statics results are derived. In some circumstances, campaign contributions decrease as the...

In this paper we use a simple median voter model to analyze the effects of tax systems with differing degrees of progressivity. We find that relatively high taxes on middle incomes have two important advantages: on the one hand, they help to ensure that all citizens are better off than they...