The budget forms the legal basis of government spending. If a budget is not in place at the beginning of the fiscal year, planning as well as current spending are jeopardized and government shutdown may result. This paper develops a continuous-time war-of-attrition model of budgeting in a...

Generally, Democrats do not increase military spending, and Republicans do not raise welfare payments. Mostly, ruling politicians stick to the manifesto of their party. The current paper provides a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon that does not assume politicians or voters to be...

This paper introduces preliminary evidence from a cross-country database of policy characteristics and potential uses of that database. While most databases have emphasized either the content of policies (e.g., size of government deficits) or countries&' formal institutions (e.g., political...

In this note, we use the technique of option sets to sort out the implications of coalitional strategyproofness in the spatial setting. We also discuss related issues and open problems. -- social choice ; strategyproofness ; voting

We develop a simple two period model to study the importance of motivational differences among politicians in describing the role of elections and explaining policy choices. In our model, politicians differ in their motives of running public office. Good politicians care about policies while bad...

This paper frames the transition towards clean energies as a sequential process of instrument choice and instrument change. First, regulators decide how to initiate the transition away from fossil energies. Here, support policies for renewable electricity are politically convenient because they...