The objective of this paper is to explore various relationships between self-reported life satisfaction and state public finance in the U.S. The paper focuses on both government expenditure and revenue (especially tax) structures. This paper is the first of its kind to examine the relationship...

The budget forms the legal basis of government spending. If a budget is not in place at the beginning of the fiscal year, planning as well as current spending are jeopardized and government shutdown may result. This paper develops a continuous-time war-of-attrition model of budgeting in a...

The budget forms the legal basis of government spending. If a budget is not in place at the beginning of the fiscal year, planning as well as current spending are jeopardized and government shutdown may result. This paper develops a continuous-time war-of-attrition model of budgeting in a...

Performance budgeting schemes in the public sector have to operate with imperfect performance measures. We argue that these imperfections generate incentives for the potential recipients of performance-based funds to use up resources in socially wasteful influence activities. We develop a...

Divided government is often thought of as causing legislative deadlock. I investigate the link between divided government and economic reforms using a novel data set on welfare reforms in US states between 1978 and 2010. Panel data regressions show that under divided government a US state is...

In 1906, the United States instituted its first drug laws. Over time, drug prohibition and criminalization have continued, becoming what is known today as the "War on Drugs." This Article examines the political economy of the War on Drugs with particular emphasis on the unintended consequences...

Scholarly research demonstrates that Regulatory Impact Analysis often falls short of the standards articulated in executive orders and Office of Management and Budget guidance. More often than not, agencies do not appear to use the Regulatory Impact Analysis to inform major decisions. Regulatory...

Policymakers must do something to slow the growing debt burden or else face a major fiscal meltdown. Proposals such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal would only make the looming fiscal crisis worse

We compare US policy response to COVID-19 with its G7 counterparts between March and September 2020. The G7 countries, while economically and ideologically aligned, have instituted vastly different policies to mitigate the spread of the disease with varying degrees of compliance. To quantify the...