This model of an electric utility views the regulator as setting price with the firm choosing ex ante capital and labor inputs and responding to ex post demand with its fuel input and the services of the ex ante inputs. If the firm anticipates that its choice of capital stock will influence the...

With a nonlocalized pollution externality, different groups bear the costs and benefits of abatement. In the case of acid rain these groups are, respectively, consumers in the Midwest and pollutees in the Northeast. These groups have conflicting interests that are represented respectively by a...

Regulation has economic and political dimensions, both of which I endogenize in this hierarchical model in which a legislature chooses by majority rule the mandate of an agency that faithfully regulates a firm with private information about its costs. Sufficient conditions are given for an...

This paper presents a complete information model of competitive lobbying in a majority-rule institution where lobbying consists of providing politically-valuable resources to legislators. Legislators have three roles. First, they act as allies or opponents in deciding whether to consider a...

This paper provides a theory of private politics in which an activist seeks to change the production practices of a firm for the purpose of redistribution to those whose interests it supports. The source of the activist's influence is the possibility of support for its cause by the public. The...

Activist NGOs have increasingly foregone public politics and turned to private politics to change the practices of firms and industries. This paper focuses on private politics, activist strategies, and nonmarket strategies of targets. A formal theory of an encounter between an activist...