This paper proposes a dynamic politico-economic theory of debt, government finance and expenditure. Agents have preferences over a private and a government-provided public good, financed through labor taxation. Subsequent generations of voters choose taxation, government expenditure and debt...

The paper compares the policy choices regarding risk-transfer against low-probability-high-loss events between elected and appointed public officials. Empirical evidence using data on U.S. municipality-level shows that appointed city managers are more likely to adopt federal risk-transfer...

This paper proposes a dynamic politico-economic theory of debt, government finance and expenditure. Agents have preferences over a private and government-provided public good, financed through labour taxation. Subsequent generations of voters choose taxation, government expenditure and debt...

In this paper we estimate a bargaining model of government formation in parliamentary democracies. We use the estimated structural model to conduct constitutional experiments aimed at evaluating the impact of institutional features of the political environment on the duration of the government...

The goal of this paper is to develop an estimable model of President-Congress bargaining in the US, and to use this model to provide a better understanding of the objectives behind the New Deal. In the model, the distribution of federal funds across regions of the country is the outcome of a...

Economic theory advances various arguments in favor of and against privatizing education. In this paper we investigate the extent to which these arguments influence voters' opinions. We analyze two popular referenda in which some 400,000 voters in two Swiss cantons expressed their opinions on...

Campaign expenditures are not effective in increasing candidates' vote shares if voters do not respond to the advertisement when they believe that campaign expenditures are financed with "tainted money". In this situation, limiting contributions may reduce the number of policy favors that...

This paper investigates whether Japanese people were happy and unhappy with the general election conducted on September 11, 2005, in which the Prime Minister, Koizumi, won a landslide victory. We conducted a large survey just after the election to ask people how happy they were and which party...

This paper studies the effects that the revelation of information on the electorate's preferences has on voters' turnout decisions. The experimental data show that closeness in the division of preferences induces a significant increase in turnout. Moreover, for closely divided electorates (and...