Tax incentives can be a useful tool to stimulate investment in developing countries. However, in these countries interest groups often are able to exert considerable influence in its management, if not its design. From a power-based approach to the political economy of tax reform we find how...

This paper studies the interaction between different actors in the policy-making process of fiscal transfer reform in Colombia. To analyse this reform, we use the “life cycle of reform” framework. In that context, we follow critical phases in the reform process: planning, dialogue and...

In this paper redistribution policy is analyzed in a 2-period overlapping generations model with heterogeneous individuals and asymmetric information between the government and the private sector. Individuals of the same generation differ with respect to their labor productivity. In each period,...

This paper analyzes the relationship between the size of an economic union and the degree of policy centralization. We consider a political economy setting in which elected representatives bargain about the degree of centralization within the union. In our model strategic delegation affects the...

In this note we analyze how aging affects immigration policy. We set up a dynamic political-economy model of representative democracy in which the government of the destination country sets the immigration level to maximize aggregate welfare of the constituency. Aging, i.e. a decline in the...

An overlapping generations model is set up in this paper to analyze social security policy in a representative democracy with asymmetric information. The model considers not only redistribution between generations but also redistribution within generations according to individual labor incomes....

In this paper we investigate the twofold effect of demographics on international factor flows in a model with endogenous policy constraints on both foreign direct investment and migration. Factor price differences between industrialized and developing countries create economic incentives for...

This paper empirically investigates contrasting views on the politics of economic policy. Merging different databases, we test various predictions coming form different strands of literature, with the aim of explaining the cross-sectional and temporal variation in the degree of regulatory...

This paper argues that the study of policy incidence in industrial organization needs to take the endogeneity of government into account. The point is made by investigating whether political considerations are important in terms of understanding the causes and effects of deregulation using data...