Models of electoral accountability typically assume a politician provides a public good. Yet in many contexts, elected officials distribute private goods among voters with conflicting interests. We present a formal model to analyze this situation. An elected official allocates a rivalrous good...

Nimbyism is widely thought to arise from an inherent tradeoff between localism and efficiency in government: because many development projects have spatially concentrated costs and diffuse benefits, local residents naturally oppose proposed projects. But why cannot project developers (with large...

The primary approach to studying lobbying assumes that it allows interests to provide information to politicians. Literature has largely focused on the strategies that lobbyists can use to overcome the problem of credible communication under misalignment of preferences. This appears at odds with...