This paper analyzes endogenous lobbying over a unidimensional policy issue. Individuals differ in policy preferences and decide either to join one of two opposite interest lobbies or not to take part in lobbying activities. Once formed, lobbies make contributions to the incumbent government in...

In this paper we argue that two important causes of welfare losses in oligopolistic markets have been neglected. We show that in models where location is endogenous, welfare losses arising from wrong locations or from lack of market coverage may be substantial despite firms competing in prices....

This paper analyzes incentives for cronyism in politics within a political agency model with moral hazard. The analysis focuses on the institutional features, which define contractual and appointment procedures within political organizations. The institutional framework does not allow explicit...

This paper studies the relationship between incumbents' performance and political polarization, both with theory and data. The theory is based on a spatial model of political competition in which the voters use the incumbent's performance in office to update their beliefs about his competence. A...

A child's family structure is a fundamental determinant of future well-being, making it essential to understand how public policies affect the involvement of fathers. In this paper, we exploit a reform of the German parental leave system - which increased mother's income and reduced legal...

A child's family structure is a fundamental determinant of future well-being, making it essential to understand how public policies affect the involvement of fathers. In this paper, we exploit a reform of the German parental leave system which increased mother's income and reduced legal father's...

We develop a theory of information flows and political regime change, when citizens use information and communication technologies (ICTs) for both information acquisition and protest coordination. Governments can respond by obfuscation of citizens' signal or by restricting access to ICTs used...

This paper analyzes voluntary provision of a differentiated public good within an organization. A moderate principal (or a median member of the organization) assigns the public good production to one of two extreme agents. A contributing agent then gets the opportunity to choose a public good...

We study the percentage of welfare losses (PWL) yielded by imperfect competition under product differentiation. When demand is linear, if prices, outputs, costs and the number of firms can be observed, PWL is arbitrary in both Cournot and Bertrand equilibria. If in addition, the elasticity of...