During the last decade unicameral proposals have been put forward in fourteen US states. In this paper we propose a theoretical framework casting some lights on the drawbacks of bicameral state legislatures and on the effects of the proposed constitutional reforms. In a setting where lawmakers...

We model the role of a parliament’s structure in shaping the accountability of elected representatives. In a setting in which lawmakers interact with a lobby through a bargaining process and with voters by means of elections, we show that only a single legislative body who can make take it or...

While anecdotal evidence suggests that interest groups play a key role in shaping immigration, there is no systematic empirical evidence on this issue. To motivate our analysis, we develop a simple theoretical model where migration policy is the result of the interaction between organized groups...

In this article we carry out a descriptive analysis of lobbying expenditures on migration in the USA between 1998 and 2005. While political action committees (PAC) contributions and lobbying are in general positively correlated, our results suggest that this is not the case when it comes to...

This paper analyzes the interaction between the welfare state and immigration policy. We establish a negative relationship between the number of dependents and the extent of the welfare state due to the leakage of benefits. We also explain the determination of immigration policy as the outcome...

We extend the protection for sale framework by modelling non tariff barriers. Explicitly introducing partial rent capturing leads to a testable specification that bridges the gap between the theoretical Grossman and Helpman (1994) model and its empirical implementation, where coverage ratios...