Governments are known for procrastinating when it comes to resolving painful policy problems. Whatever the political motives for waiting to decide, procrastination distorts economic decisions relative to what would arise with early policy resolution. In so doing, it engenders excess burden. This...

The implications of national security related procedures for trade flows at border points in OECD countries has become a major topic of commentary in popular press. We discuss whether the economic costs of border delays are represented solely by time spent in awaiting processing. This has been...

This paper proposes a structural approach to measuring the effects of electoral accountability. We estimate a political agency model with imperfect information in order to identify and quantify discipline and selection effects, using data on U.S. governors for 1982-2012. We find that the...

The Great Recession has renewed interest in Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs around the world. At the same time, there have been important advances in both theory and measurement of UI. In this paper, we first use the theory to present a unified treatment of the welfare effects of UI benefit...

The Great Recession has renewed interest in Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs around the world. At the same time, there have been important advances in both theory and measurement of UI. In this paper, we first use the theory to present a unified treatment of the welfare effects of UI benefit...

This article proposes a structural approach to measuring the effects of electoral accountability. We estimate a political agency model with imperfect information in order to identify and quantify discipline and selection effects, using data on U.S. governors. We find that the possibility of...

The Great Recession has renewed interest in unemployment insurance (UI) programs around the world. At the same time, there have been important advances in both theory and measurement of UI. In this review, we first use the theory to present a unified treatment of the welfare effects of UI...