Explaining individual behavior in politics should rely on the same motivational assumptions as explaining behavior in the market: That’s what Political Economy, understood as the application of economics to the study of political processes, is all about. In its standard variant, those who...

Elected representatives have little incentive to pursue the interests of those electing them once they are elected. This well-known principle-agent problem leads, in a variety of theories of government, to non-optimally large levels of government expenditure. An implication is that budgetary...

One of the most crucial lessons to be taken from the literature on electoral business cycles is that the short- run electorally-induced fluctuations prejudice the long-run welfare. Since the very first studies on the matter, some authors offered suggestions as to what should be done against this...

This paper analyses the political constraints of intergenerational risk sharing. The first result is that the political process generally does not lead to ex ante optimal insurance. The second result is that in a second best political setting PAYG still contributes to intergenerational risk...

Viewing fiscal policies as the outcome of democratically resolved conflicts of households over public goods and taxes, the quot;economic model of politicsquot; proposes a public choice approach, which does not rely on social welfare functions. With it, a country's overall budget can be derived...

We study the determinants of voting outcomes on the provision of public consumption through marginal income taxes in the context of the simple linear growth model. We focus on how the dynamic politicoeconomic equilibrium maps the economic fundamentals to policies and long-run growth. We find...