There are more than 500,000 elected officials in the United States, 96 percent of whom serve in local governments. Electoral density—the number of elected officials per capita or per governmental unit—varies greatly from place to place. The most electorally dense county has more than 20...

This paper examines the extent to which a democratic society characterized by an unequal distribution of income, is capable of transforming potential efficiency gains into actual economy-wide welfare gains. The model emphasizes the distortive effects of these potential efficiency gains on the...

Previous contributions to the literature have used data on agricultural production activities in West Africa to show that plots of land managed by women are less productive (on average) than the ones farmed by their husbands. This would seem to indicate a rejection of the intrahousehold...