An important question in political economy concerns the form of transfers to special interests. The Chicago view is that political competition leads politicians to make such transfers efficiently. The Virginia position is that lack of information on the part of voters leads politicians to favor...

Policy persistence refers to the tendency of the political process to maintain policies once they have been introduced. This paper develops a theory of policy persistence based on the idea that policies create incentives for beneficiaries to take actions which increase their willingness to pay...