This paper sets out a simple dynamic probabilistic voting model in which a government allocates a fixed budget across electoral districts that differ in their loyalty to the ruling party. The model predicts that the geographic pattern of spending depends on the way the government balances...

Polities differ in the extent to which political parties can pre-commit to carry out promised policy actions if they take power. Commitment problems may arise due to a divergence between the ex ante incentives facing national parties that seek to capture control of the legislature and the ex...

This paper provides a political-economy explanation of the degree of centralization in economic policy making. To determine which policies are to be centralized, regions select representatives who then negotiate the degree of centralization and the regional cost shares of centrally decided...

Cities increasingly address climate change, e.g. by pledging city-level emission reduction targets. This is puzzling for the provision of a global public good: what are city governments' reasons for doing so, and do pledges actually translate into emission reductions? Empirical studies have...

If a welfare transfers policy is programmatic (it is non-partisan, transparent and persisting), is it irrelevant for politicians' electoral fortunes? I show that the answer is no with a political agency model where politicians' competence is uncertain to all. In my set-up, an incumbent...

Commitment voting is a mechanism for signalling intensity of preferences and long-term commitment to governance decisions in proof of stake blockchains. In commitment voting, the voting weight of a vote in any given election is determined by 1) the amount of tokens under a voters control and 2)...

We provide an explanation why centralisation of political decision makingresults in overspending in some policy domains, whereas too low spending persists in others.We study a model in which delegates from jurisdictions bargain over local public goods provision.If all of the costs of public...

We model the trade-off between centralized and decentralized decision making over the provision of local public goods. Centralized decisions are made in a legislature of locally elected representatives, and this creates a conflict of interest between citizens in different jurisdictions. The...