Empirical studies of central bank independence and inflation identify Japan as an outlier. By standard measures, the Bank of Japan is one of the least independent central banks in the world, and yet Japan enjoys some of the lowest inflation rates. This paper develops a model of monetary link;...

If different parties control the U.S. Congress and White House, the United States may maintain higher import protection than otherwise. This proposition follows from a distributive politics model in which Congress can choose to delegate trade policymaking to the President. When the congressional...

Sollbruchstelle: this German engineering term translates as "part that is supposed to break down". It stands for that part of a machine that is deliberately designed to be weaker, and less costly, than other parts of the machine so that it, rather than the more expensive parts, takes the hit...

Interest groups pay monetary contributions to gain access and provide information to a policymaker. If their interests are aligned with those of the policymaker's constituency, they have costless access and report their private information truthfully. If their interests conflict, they are forced...

In political settings, delegation is often motivated by differences in expertise of costs of information gathering. Even if a political principal is less well informed than a regulatory agency, she can monitor whether the agency is acting in her best interests by taking informational cues from...

The Nordhaus hypothesis about the political business cycle asserts that elected politicians have incentives to expand the money supply prior to elections to stimulate the economy and thereby engineer their reelection. Central bank independence is widely regarded as an institutional solution to...