We aim to explain petro populism - the excessive use of oil revenues to buy political support. To reap the full gains of natural resource income politicians need to remain in office over time. Hence, even a rent-seeking incumbent who prioritizes his own welfare above that of citizens, will want...

If central banks value the ex-post accuracy of their forecasts, previously announced interest rate paths might affect the current policy rate. We explore whether this "forecast adherence" has influenced the monetary policies of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and the Norges Bank, the two central...

We develop a model of credit rating agencies (CRAs) based on reputation concerns. Ratings affect investors' choice and, thereby, also issuers' access to funding and default risk. We show that - in equilibrium - the informational content of credit ratings is inferior to that of CRAs' private...

Rational choice theories of electoral participation stress that an individual's decision to vote depends on her expected net benefit from doing so. If this instrumental motive is relevant, then turnout should be higher in elections where more is at stake. We test this prediction, by studying how...

We identify exogenous variation in incumbent policymakers’ re-election probabilities and explore empirically how this variation affects their investments in physical capital. Our results indicate that a higher re-election probability leads to higher investments, particularly in the purposes...

Galí, López-Salido, and Vallés (2007) suggest that because part of the population follow a rule-of-thumb by which they spend their entire disposable income each period, private consumption responds positively to defcitfinanced increases in government spending. Key to this result is a...

This paper analyzes a framework where policymakers decide how to spend public resources on physical capital and labor in order to produce two public goods. Candidate policymakers disagree about which goods to produce, and may alternate in office due to elections. When capital and labor are...