Theories in political economy depend critically on assumptions about motivations of politicians. Our analysis starts from the premise that politicians, like other economic agents, are rational individuals who make career decisions by comparing the expected returns of alternative choices. The...

This paper contains additional details about the model in our paper "A Political Economy Model of Congressional Careers" (Diermeier, Keane and Merlo (2004)), as well as the computational methods we use to solve and estimate the model, and the construction of the data set

Theories in political economy depend critically on assumptions about motivations of politicians. Our analysis starts from the premise that politicians, like other economic agents, are rational individuals who make career decisions by comparing the expected returns of alternative choices. The...

Models of government formation processes in multi party democracies are usually highly sensitive to the rules that govern the selection of formateurs (i.e., the parties selected to propose a potential government). The theoretical literature has focused on two selection rules: selection...

When a firm files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S., negotiations take place among its claimants to decide on what to do with the firm and who gets what. If an agreement cannot be reached, then the firm is likely be liquidated. Consequently, the liquidation value of the firm plays a crucial...

We build a structural model of Chapter 13 bankruptcy that captures salient features of personal bankruptcy under Chapter 13. We estimate our model using a novel data set that we construct from bankruptcy court dockets recorded in Delaware in 2001 and 2002. Our estimation results highlight the...

We build a structural model of Chapter 13 bankruptcy that captures salient features of personal bankruptcy under Chapter 13. We estimate our model using a novel data set we construct from bankruptcy court dockets recorded in Delaware between 2001 and 2002. Our estimation results highlight the...

We study the possibility of trade for purely informational reasons. We depart from previous analyses (e.g. Grossman and Stiglitz 1980 and Milgrom and Stokey 1982) by allowing the amp;#64257;nal payoamp;#64256; of the asset being traded to depend on an action taken by its eventual owner. We characterize...

Which budgetary institutions result in efficient provision of public goods? We analyze a model with two parties bargaining over the allocation to a public good each period. Parties place different values on the public good, and these values may change over time. We focus on budgetary...