Choropleth disease maps are often used to inform the public about the risks posed by COVID-19. In a survey conducted in the US state of Georgia in June 2020, we randomly assigned respondents to view either of two maps. The first map reported county-level COVID case counts; the second displayed...

America, we are told, is a nation divided. The cartographers who draw up the maps of U.S. election results have branded a new division in American politics: Republican red versus Democratic blue. What is the source of this division? Most observers point not to the bread-and-butter economic...

While conventional wisdom holds that partisan bias in U.S. legislative elections results from intentional partisan and racial gerrymandering, we demonstrate that substantial bias can also emerge from patterns of human geography. We show that in many states, Democrats are inefficiently...

Why do some federations implement highly progressive intergovernmental transfer schemes while others do not? First, this essay establishes some stylized facts, using provincial-level data from nine federations to measure the extent of inter-regional redistribution achieved through...

This paper examines the role of institutions of territorial representation in shaping long-term patterns of inter-regional redistribution within federations. A simple legislative bargaining model with endogenous taxation suggests that over-represented states should be favored in the distribution...

A median voter model is developed to explain the size of the vertical fiscal gap in a federation, i.e. the extent to which subnational governments' expenditures exceed their own-source tax revenues. In our model, individuals vote in subnational elections and in federal elections to determine tax...

This article examines the relationship between territorial representation and fiscal redistribution in the European Union. Given that small states are vastly overrepresented in both the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, models of legislative vote-buying predict that...

We consider two classes of explanations for the rise in policy-related economic uncertainty in the United States since 1960. The first stresses growth in government spending, taxes, and regulation. A second stresses increased political polarization and its implications for the policymaking...