Mancur Olson's theory of the decline of nations is path-breaking in political economics. It has been tested cross-sectionally in numerous empirical studies. We survey the existing results briefly, with a special focus on studies using the number of lobbies as an exogenous variable. Using data...

The core personal consumption expenditure (PCE) price index, the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge, rose to 5.2 percent on January 2022, which is the highest rate of increase since 40 years ago. Our estimates show that the annualized quarterly core PCE prices could reach 5.45% in the...