We combine Duverger's Law (1954) with Demsetz's (1968) theory of natural monopoly to provide a novel perspective on electoral competitiveness in a single member district, plurality rule system. In the framework we develop, competitiveness depends on the contestability of elections, which...

This paper analyzes the choice by Canadian consumers whether to cross the border into the U.S. to shop. To do so a model is built in which consumers value two consumption goods (goods that can and cannot be smuggled), leisure, and government services (provided through commodity taxes). The...

We address the problem of how to investigate whether economics, or politics, or both, matter in the explanation of public policy. We first pose the problem in a particular context by uncovering a political business cycle (using Canadian data covering 130 years), and by taking up the challenge to...

Since its publication over 60 years ago, Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Prices (1936) has substantially influenced both macroeconomic theory and popular opinion about what governments can and should do. However, the extent to which counter-cyclical stabilization has actually...

In this paper I apply the work of Abrams and Iossifov (2006) to monetary policy in canada to see if same political party affiliation is needed to produce evidence of political opportunism. After modifying their anaylsis to maintain consistency in the time series dimensions of their variables for...

In a series of recent papers, education economists such as Charles Manski (1992), Dennis Epple and Richard Romano (1998a, 1998b) and Thomas Nechyba (1999) have emphasized the presence of one particular educational spillover in the use of school vouchers – the “peer group” problem. This is...

From at least 1893 economists have viewed income as an important determinant of government size and the hypothesis that government size increases with income is now enshrined in the literature as Wagner’s Law. More recently, however, public choice economists and growth theorists have tended to...