Politicians tend to push the amount of public debt beyond socially desirable levels in order to increase their reelection chances. We develop a model that provides a new explanation for this behavior: office holders undertake debt-financed public projects, but postpone the timing of part of the...

We consider a general equilibrium model where multi-member households make efficient collective consumption decisions and operate in a competitive market environment. Individuals have the option to leave the household and make it on their own or join another household. We study the effect of...

We consider firms and multi-member households operating in a competitive market environment. Households are endowed with resources (commodity bundles) and shares of firm ownership. Household members are characterized by individual preferences, possibly with intra-household consumption...

SFB 649 Discussion Paper 2006-054 On the Coexistence of Banks and Markets Hans Gersbach* Harald Uhlig** * University of Heidelberg and CEPR ** Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Deutsche Bundesbank, CentER and CEPR This research was supported by the Deutsche...

When a counter-proposal is made to an initiative to change the Swiss constitution, the citizenry makes three binary majority choices: the initiative versus the status quo, the initiative versus the counter-proposal, and the status quo versus the counterproposal as a tie-breaker. If there is a...