Laws requiring minors to seek parental consent or to notify a parent prior to obtaining an abortion raise the cost of risky sex for teenagers. Assuming choices to engage in risky sex are made rationally, parental involvement laws should lead to less risky sex among teens, either because of a...

The authors develop a positive theory of how interest-group competition shapes the organization of Congress and use it to explain campaign contribution patterns in financial services. Since interest groups cannot enforce fee-for-service contracts with legislators, legislators have an incentive...

This paper investigates the value of political institutions for financial markets, using panel data from emerging market countries. We test the hypothesis that changes in political institutions, such as improvements in democratic rights and increased government accountability, have a direct...

Government spending on health has grown as a percent of GDP over the last 40 years in industrialized countries. Widespread decentralization of healthcare systems has often accompanied this increase in spending. In this paper, we explore the effect of soft budget constraints on subnational health...

This paper introduces fiscal policy in a model of sovereign risk spreads (""spreads""). Using panel data from emerging market countries, we find that reductions in public expenditure are a more powerful tool for reducing spreads than increases in revenues. Specifically, cuts in current spending...

We investigate the geographical concentration of representatives and the distribution of fiscal transfers both theoretically and empirically. We develop a model which predicts that funds to an area are positively correlated with the number of representatives residing in that area. Our empirical...