The paper investigates strategic campaigning in a model of redistributive politics in a society with many groups and two parties. Campaigns are informative, and parties can target campaigns to different groups. Voters are uncertain about whether parties fabor special groups. The parties will...

Governments often pursue procyclical fiscal policies, even though they reduce voter welfare. Is this because voters actually prefer procyclical policies? The analysis in this paper exploits the first individual-level evidence from an original survey of 12,000 respondents in 8 countries across...

Transparency has become a catchword and in the economic-political debate is often seen as a universal remedy for all sorts of problems. In this paper, we analyze and discuss the meaning and use of the concept of transparency in economic research. We look for common denominators across different...

We analyze fiscal rules within a Monetary Union in the presence of (i) asymmetric information about member states' potential output and, therefore, output gap and (ii) bail-out among member states. In our framework, bail-out lowers the scope for signalling (discrimination) by member states...

We analyze fiscal rules within a Monetary Union in the presence of (i) asymmetric information on member states' potential output and (ii) bail-out among member states. The first-best deficit is contingent on the cycle, that is, on member states' output gap. In the presence of asymmetric...

In most economies, macroeconomic policy is conducted by two or more independent authorities. In general, each policymaker has a different piece of information about the state of the economy, and this information is different from the one held by the private sector. We extend the model of James...

In most economies, macroeconomic policy is conducted by two or more independent authorities. In general, each policymaker has a different piece of information about the state of the economy, and this information is different from the one held by the private sector. We extend the model of James...

Transparency has become a catchword and in the economic-political debate is often seen as a universal remedy for all sorts of problems. In this paper, we analyze and discuss the meaning and use of the concept of transparency in economic research. We look for common denominators across different...

We study political competition in an environment in which voters have private information about their preferences. Our framework covers models of income taxation, public-goods provision or publicly provided private goods. Politicians are vote-share-maximizers. They can propose any policy that is...