Tenured public officials such as judges are often thought to be indifferent to theconcerns of the electorate and, as a result, potentially lacking in discipline butunlikely to pander to public opinion. We investigate this proposition empiricallyusing data on promotion decisions taken by senior...

Tenured public officials such as judges are often thought to be indifferent to the concerns of the elctorate and, as a result, potentially lacking in discipline but unlikely to pander to public opinion.  We investigate this proposition empirically using data on promotion decisions taken by...

This paper analyzes the role of yardstick competition for improving political decisions. We examine how performance comparisons across jurisdictions affect the agency problem resulting from uncertainty about politicians (adverse selection) and their policies (moral hazard). We study two forms of...

Employing a political-economics approach, this paper compares small states and unions when the former fail to internalize cross-border externalities of publicly provided goods. It discusses two types of unions: federations with more than one level of government and unitary states. While unitary...

We present a theoretical model of a parliamentary democracy, where party structures, government coalitions and fiscal policies are endogenously determined. The model predicts that, relative to proportional elections, majoritarian elections reduce government spending because they reduce party...

Two aspects of corruption are examined theoretically: its effect on macroeconomic variables, and its determination from the political environment. Corruption is defined in an occupational choice model as the extra fees or bribes that must be paid by some entrepreneurs. Even in an environment of...

This paper develops a theory of policy myopia. Policy myopia arises when rational voters set performance standards that allow elected politicians to distort the portfolio of public investments towards short-term investments. We show that the fact that voters cannot observe immediately how much...

Political short-termism obtains when a politician provides a public good that gives an immediate payoff while it would be optimal for the society that he provided a public good that gives a payoff only in the future. We consider a simple two-period political agency model and study whether...

We survey and synthesize the political economy literature on dynamic elections in the two traditional settings, spatial preferences and rent-seeking, under perfect and imperfect monitoring of politicians actions. We define the notion of stationary electoral equilibrium, which encompasses...

Tenured public officials such as judges are often thought to be insulated from political pressure and, as a result, indifferent to the concerns of the electorate. We investigate this proposition empirically using data on promotion decisions taken by senior English judges between 1985 and 2005....