We study political dynasties in the United States Congress since its inception in 1789. We document patterns in the evolution and profile of political dynasties, study the self-perpetuation of political elites, and analyze the connection between political dynasties and political competition. We...

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...

In this paper, we investigate whether business cycles can imply sizable effects on average unemployment. First, using a reduced-form model of the labor market, we show that job finding rate fluctuations generate intrinsically a non-linear effect on unemployment: positive shocks reduce...

Commercial policies are often only efficient insofar as those harmed can be compensated. In practice, compensatory measures fall far short of distributive harm. We rationalize the paucity of compensation as a strategic effort on the part of elected officials to withhold information about effects...

We argue that societies with a stronger tendency towards postmaterialist life goals tilt the tax structure towards personal income taxes and away from corporate taxation. We provide empirical evidence for this correlation in OECD countries. To address endogeneity issues we then use an...

It has been shown that higher capital taxes can have a growth-enhancing effect when combined with a revenue-compensating cut in wage taxes (Uhlig and Yanagawa 1996; European Economic Review 40, 1521-1540) or with an expansion in productivity-increasing public services (Rivas 2003; European Economic...

Can a large-scale defcit spending program speed up recovery after recession? To answer that question we calibrate a standard neoclassical growth model with US data and assume that an exogenous shock has driven aggregate output far below steady-state level. We calibrate the model such that a...

We provide an axiomatic framework for exchange markets with a willingness- to-pay/willingness-to-accept discrepancy. First, we obtain a two parameter family of market invariants under price-scaling representing the excess demand. One of the parameters can be identified as endowment. The other is...

Changes in the field of security since the 1990s triggered off a number of still continuing military transformations in liberal democracies. Since their armed forces were designed for the purposes of the bipolar Cold war security constellation, they have been “redesigned” according to the...

We study the effect of electoral incentives on the allocation of public services across legislative districts. We develop a model in which elections encourage individual legislators to cater to parochial interests and thus aggravate the common pool problem. Using unique data from seven US...