This is a timely and ambitious paper on an important topic. The phenomenon of social sorting and its role in human capital transmission is one that every parent and homeowner has direct experience with. On the other hand, the economic research tying it to {$\backslash$textquotedblleft}larger{$\backslash$textquotedblright} issues of national…

We model the transition from a chaotic status quo to a more orderly political regime as a two-stage game involving two warring factions & the citizens. The warring factions move first & decide the form of government by (1) inviting an external arbitrator, (2) choosing the people as arbitrator, ie, democratizing, or (3) maintaining the status quo…

In this paper, we address empirically the trade-offs involved in choosing between bureaucrats and politicians. In order to do this, we map institutions of selection and retention of public officials to the type of public officials they induce. We do this by specifying a collective decision-making model, and exploiting its equilibrium information…

We use a policy change that occurred in Oregon in the late 1980s to re-visit the budget-maximizing agenda setter theory of local public expenditure. Prior to 1987, Oregon school districts held operating levy elections with an exogenous, often zero or very low, spending reversion. From 1987 through 1990, districts experienced a “safety net” regime…