This paper uses variation in the timing of the Mexican antipoverty program's introduction across municipalities to identify its impact on the share of votes for the local incumbent party. Evidence is found that voters reward the mayor's party for the central benefit to their constituencies,...

In actual environmental policy, the design of actual pollution emission taxes differs significantly with the optimal Pigovian tax. In particular, earmarking prevails and actual taxes are usually combined with regulation. Furthermore tax rates are generally too low to significantly influence...

The determinants of incentive regulation are a key issue in industrial policy. I study an asymmetric information model of incentive rules selection by a political principal endowed with an information-gathering technology whose efficiency increases with the effort exerted by two accountable...

Advertisements provide consumers with knowledge about private products, whereas political information is required to provide voters with knowledge of public issues. Modern information technologies and globalisation are increasing the exposure of individuals to information. Goods advertising is...

Are national or multinational firms better lobbyists? This paper analyzes the extent of national environmental regulation when policy is determined in a lobbying game between a government and firm. We compare the resulting regulation levels for national and multinational firms. We identify three...

We analyse the redistribution of a resource among agents who have claims to the resource and who are ordered linearly. A well known example of this particular situation is the river sharing problem. We exploit the linear order of agents to transform the river sharing problem to a sequence of...