This paper examines the reasons why corruption and policy distortions tend to exhibit a high degree of persistence in certain regimes. We identify circumstances under which a firm seeks to evade regulations by (1) bribing of local inspectors, and (2) lobbying high-level government politicians to...

We assess the effect of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws on public corruption in the United States. Specifically, we investigate the impact of switching from a weak to a strong state-level FOIA law on corruption convictions of state and local government officials. The evidence suggests...

We develop an equilibrium theory of employer-sponsored retirement plan design using a behavioral contract theory approach. The operation of the labor market results in retirement plans that generally cater to, rather than correct, workers' mistakes. Our theory provides new explanations for a...

The primary motivation for retirement savings policy is the view that many of us, if left to our own devices, will not save enough for retirement. Special tax subsidies for employer-sponsored retirement plans — a principal component of the federal policy scheme — have made such plans the...

This paper models how a nation's military manpower procurement system affects popular support for war and political choices regarding war. When citizens have idiosyncratic benefits from war and costs from serving, I characterize when a volunteer military maximizes support, and when a mixture of...

In the behavioral industrial organization literature, market forces may not eliminate inefficiencies associated with biased consumers. Regulations usually exist that could, but we show that self-governing citizen-consumers will not always enact these welfare-improving policies. In a market for...

In a system of divided power, public sector agencies are an important front in the day-to-day battle for political supremacy between the executive and the legislature. The executive's key agents in this conflict are his appointees, who are observed playing two broad roles: allies, where they...

This note empirically analyzes how partisan control of a state's legislature alters the growth of the state's tax burden. Using two related empirical strategies, one based on instrumental variables using closely controlled legislatures and one based on regression discontinuity, I find large...