Political theorists from Machiavelli to Huntington have denied the possibility of popular government arising out of the chaos of civil war, instead prescribing an intermediate stage of one-man rule by a Prince, Leviathan, or a military dictator. Based on recent empirical evidence of post-civil war democratization in El Salvador, Mozambique, and…
Over the several decades, observers of American politics have noted the sharp increase in partisanship and ideological polarization among members of Congress. While better ideological differentiation may provide voters clearer choices and increase accountability, the results of recent partisan and ideological battles have raised questions about…
An informed advisor wishes to convey her valuable information to an uninformed decision maker with identical preferences. Thus she has a current incentive to truthfully reveal her information. But if the decision maker thinks that the advisor might be biased in favor of one decision and the advisor does not wish to be thought to be biased, the…
One of the most salient changes in the world economy since 1980 has been the move toward freer trade among countries across the globe. How do existing theories about trade policy explain this puzzle? Three sets of explanations are prominent. First, many focus on changes in trade policy preferences among domestic actors, either societal groups or…
This article explores the benefits and costs of the voter initiative, a direct democracy device that allows policy decisions to be made by voters rather than their elected representatives. Previous research suggests that by introducing "competition" into the proposal process, the initiative leads to policies that are closer to the median voter's…
The role of domestic politics is investigated, using a model to show how domestic opposition during a crisis can reveal to a rival state private information about the incumbent. In particular, the public nature of democratic competition results in the institutionally induced credibility of the message.
The flow of foreign direct investment into developing countries varies greatly across countries and over time. The political factors that affect these flows are not well understood. Focusing on the relationship between trade and investment, we argue that international trade agreements-GATT/WTO and preferential trade agreements (PTAs)-provide…
The flow of foreign direct investment into developing countries varies greatly across countries and over time. The political factors that affect these flows are not well understood. Focusing on the relationship between trade and investment, we argue that international trade agreements - GATT/WTO and preferential trade agreements (PTAs) - provide…
We study a model of decentralized legislative bargaining over public decisions with transfers. We establish the emergence of middlemen in legislative bargaining as a robust equilibrium phenomenon. We show that legislative intermediation can impact policy outcomes, and can be inefficient. To fulfill this role, the middleman's policy preferences and…
This article discusses two distinctive approaches for thinking about historical legacies in the post-communist context. The first approach, which builds on the work of Ken Jowitt, emphasizes the distinctiveness of Leninist socioeconomic and political legacies, while the second approach, rooted in the writings of Andrew Janos, highlights the…
We study collective decisions by time-discounting individuals choosing a common consumption stream. We show that with any heterogeneity in time preferences, utilitarian aggregation necessitates a present bias. In lab experiments three quarters of 'social planners' exhibited present biases, and less than two percent were time consistent. Roughly a…
Historians, political scientists, and legal scholars have long debated the origins and development of the executive veto in the early United States. Some scholars argue that the power was originally conceived as quite limited. These scholars argue that until Andrew Jackson used the veto against the recharter of the Bank of the United States, the…
We study the behavior of an agent who dislikes large choice sets because of the 'cost of thinking' involved in choosing from them. Focusing on preferences over lotteries of menus, we introduce the notion of thinking aversion. We characterize preferences as the difference between an affine evaluation of the content of the menu and a function that…
Many theoretical and empirical accounts of representation argue that primary elections are a polarizing influence. Likewise, many reformers advocate opening party nominations to non-members as a way of increasing the number of moderate elected officials. Data and measurement constraints, however, have limited the range of empirical tests of this…
We study a model of elections in non-majoritarian systems that captures the link between competition in policies and competition in campaign spending. We argue that the overall competitiveness of the political arena depends both on the endogenous number of parties contesting the election and the endogenous level of campaign spending. These two…
We develop a multicountry, dynamic general equilibrium model of product innovation and international trade to study the creation of comparative advantage through research and development and the evolution of world trade over time. In our model, firms must incur resource costs to introduce new products, and forward-looking potential producers…
We explore the possibility that a global productivity slowdown is responsible for the widespread decline in the labor share of national income. In a neoclassical growth model with endogenous human capital accumulation a la Ben Porath (1967) and capital-skill complementarity a la Grossman et al. (2017), the steady-state labor share is positively…
The objective of this case study was to obtain some first-hand information about the functional consequences of a cosmetic tongue split operation for speech and tongue motility. One male patient who had performed the operation on himself was interviewed and underwent a tongue motility assessment, as well as an ultrasound examination. Tongue…
