Why are the old politically successful? We build a simple interest group model in which political pressure is time-intensive, showing that in the political competitive equilibrium each group lobbies for gvernment policies that lower their own value of time but that the old do so to a greater...

It has long been suggested that trade unions take actions and favor public policies that reduce the quantity of labor so that union members might enjoy greater labor incomes. Can this explain the prevalence of generous public pension programs inducing retirement? I formalize the monopoly...

We provide a model for analyzing effects of the tax system and spending programs on the determination of government spending and taxpayer welfare and show that a tax system or spending program which is suboptimal from a Ramsey point of view can improve taxpayer welfare because the system creates...

A common view in public finance is that there is an efficiency-redistribution tradeoff in which distortions are tolerated in order to redistribute income. However, the fact thatso much public- and private redistributive activity involves in-kind transfers rather than cash may be indicative of...

Some of the important implications of the parental investment model of intergenerational mobility have been derived under the assumption that parental income is the only source of heterogeneity.

COMPUSTAT data on 12,000 firms for the years 1956-1992 indicate that large firms hold less M1 as a percentage of sales that do small ones. Whether comparisons are made within or across industries, the elasticity of M1 balances with respect to sales is about 0.75. Firms headquartered in counties...