This paper studies allocation correspondences in the house allocation problems with collective initial endowments. We examine the implications of two axioms, namely “consistency” and “unanimity.” Consistency requires the allocation correspondence be invariant under reductions of...

Prescott (2004) argues that Europeans work much less than Americans because of higher taxes and that they would gain significantly by charging US taxes and working as much as Americans. I argue that the opposite may be true and that Americans work more than Europeans due to a coordination...

This paper analyses how inequality across counties in the United States of America has shaped the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the incidence of protests. The empirical analysis combines weekly data between January and December 2020 on levels of COVID-19-related policy stringency and...

Some scholars have argued that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution did not have a common set of views on economics, or that the Constitution, except perhaps in isolated clauses, does not reflect any specific economic views. The principal Framers did, in fact, share a basic set of economic...

Improving transparency and enabling the principal to hold its agents accountable is a major issue in any principal agent relationship. This paper focuses on the role of public auditors in this task and presents evidence on the impact of auditor term length and term limits on government...

This paper examines the effect of state level corruption on state beer taxes in the United States. Our lobby group model predicts that corruption reduces the beer tax, but this effect is conditional on the level of alcohol-related vehicle deaths. Using a panel of state level data from 1982 to...

Public auditors should reduce agency problems and improve transparency. We address the question of whether auditors should be elected by the citizens or appointed by either the legislature or the executive, and explore the influence of conducting performance audits. We construct a unique dataset...

Critics argue that maritime policy is protectionist legislation that restricts competition and reduces economic efficiency. In this paper, I argue the contrary. I begin with the premise that the primary role of the state is to provide national defense. A country must be able to protect its...

This study extends the political science and political psychology literature on the political ideology of lawmakers by addressing the following question: How stable is a legislator's political ideology over time? In doing so, we employ Nokken-Poole scores of legislators' political ideology for...

This paper studies how politicians and voters respond to new information on the threats of climate change. Using data on the universe of federal disaster declarations between 1989 and 2014, we document that congress members from districts hit by a hurricane are more likely to support bills...