We analyse general equilibrium relationships between trade policy and the household distribution of income, decomposing social welfare into real income level and variance components through Gini and Atkinson indexes. We embed these inequality-adjusted social welfare functions in a general...

We develop a theoretical nonlinear model of equilibrium unemployment and test its policy implications for a number of OECD countries. The theory here sees the natural rate and the associated equilibrium path of unemployment as endogenous, pushed by the interaction of shocks (mainly...

We study political activism by several agents (lobbyists, unions, etc.) who have private but imperfect policy-relevant signals, and seek to influence the decisions of a policy maker. When agents can share information and coordinate their actions, the equilibrium is shown to be equivalent to that...

It is commonly argued that skilled immigration benefits the destination country through several channels. Yet, only a small group of countries reports to have policies in place aimed at increasing the intake of skilled immigrants. Why? In this paper we analyze the factors that affect a direct...

This paper empirically explores the political-economic determinants of why governments choose to tax or subsidize trade in agriculture. We use a new data set on nominal rates of assistance (NRA) across a number of commodities spanning the last four decades for 64 countries. NRAs measure the...

Politicians frequently undertake projects whose budgetary costs are disproportionate to the benefits they create for the voters or shareholders those decision-makers represent. When they are not the result of simple random mistakes, such wasteful projects are often attributed to weak mechanisms...

The purpose of this Paper is to study the determinants of the concentration of ownership in a privatized, regulated firm. The discussion illustrates some aspects of the costs and benefits of different corporate systems. Privatized utilities are large firms with professional management: there is...

This Paper analyses an overlapping generation model of public good provision under repeated voting. The public good is financed through age-dependent taxation that distorts human capital investment. Taxes redistribute income both across different skill groups and across generations. We contrast...

In recent theories of comparative development the role of institutional differences has been crucial. Yet what explains comparative institutional evolution? We investigate this issue by studying the coffee exporting economies of Latin America. While homogeneous in many ways, they experienced...

This paper empirically analyzes both economic and non-economic determinants of attitudes towards immigrants, within and across countries. The two individual-level survey data sets used, covering a wide range of developed and developing countries, make it possible to test for interactive effects...