Trade policy is set by domestic political bargaining between globalists and protectionists, representing owners of factors specific to export and import-competing sectors respectively. Consistent with the post-Civil War Era of Restriction, protectionists implement high tariffs when status quo...

To ensure that individual actors take certain actions, community enforcement may be required. This can present a rules-versus-discretion dilemma: it can become impossible to employ discretion based on information that is not widely held, because the wider community is unable to verify how the...

Do mandatory spending programs such as Medicare improve efficiency? We analyze a model with two parties allocating a fixed budget to a public good and private transfers each period over an infinite horizon. We compare two institutions that differ in whether public good spending is discretionary...

When do voters win? Democracies have appealing properties, but failures of democracies to produce policies that benefit the voter abound. What conditions determine the success of the unorganized voter who only possess a blunt tool-- the vote-- versus an organized special interest group or firm?...

To ensure that individual actors take certain actions, community enforcement may be required. This can present a rules-versus-discretion dilemma: It can become impossible to employ discretion based on information that is not widely held, because the wider community is unable to tell whether the...

Do mandatory spending programs such as Medicare improve efficiency? We analyze a model with two parties allocating a fixed budget to a public good and private transfers each period over an infinite horizon. We compare two institutions that differ in whether public good spending is discretionary...

Do mandatory spending programs such as Medicare improve efficiency? We analyze a model with two parties allocating a fixed budget to a public good and private transfers each period over an infinite horizon. We compare two institutions that differ in whether public good spending is discretionary...

What prevents majorities from extracting surplus from minorities in legislatures? We study an infinite horizon game where a legislative body votes to determine distributive policy each period. Proposals accepted by a simple majority are implemented, otherwise the status quo allocation prevails....

Is there a limit to trade cooperation that the WTO can facilitate? In this paper I present a theory of the WTO in which the WTO is an equilibrium out- come of multiple bilateral repeated prisoners' dilemma games among countries. The equilibrium mimics an important feature of the WTO's Dispute...