budget constrained search abstract a consumer with diminishing marginal utility in consumption who can search for lower prices will balance the gains from spreading consumption evenly through time against the benefits of delaying consumption until lower prices are revealed optimal programs of consumption savings and price are characterized for a general formulation of this problem intertemporal substitutability is measured by relative risk aversion that relative risk aversion is small is sufficient for the intuitive solution as the best current price rises more search and less consumption is done the general model is adapted to special cases among other things this shows that linear utility and sequential search implies ex nte calculable reservation prices and consumption only when search stops however this characterization is a consequence of the restriction to linear utility outside of this context reservation prices and consumption may not be calculable ex ante

a political economic analysis of congressional voting patterns on nafta this paper delves into the question of the determinants of congressional voting on nafta it uses a logit model to examine both house and senate votes and is able to use district specific estimates in the former it finds only very limited support for the thesis that narrowly defined employment gainers and losers were important determinants of congressional voting patterns though some substantial support that districts that were highly agricultural or already possessed a substantial hispanic population and skilled labor force and had the most to gain from the general effects of nafta lead to a positive effect on the probability that a member of the house would vote affirmatively contributions from labor unions lowered the likelihood of affirmative votes political partisanship and ideological positions apparently had little effect on the votes a representative s political capital had a marginally significant effect on the probability on an affirmative vote but it performed positively in the senate and negatively in the house

an economic model of representative democracy this paper develops an approach to the study of democratic policy making where politicians are selected by the people from those citizens who present themselves as candidates for public office the approach has a number of attractive features first it is a conceptualization of a pure form of representative democracy in which government is by as well as of the people second the model is analytically tractable being able to handle multidimensional issue and policy spaces very naturally third it provides a vehicle for answering normative questions about the performance of representative democracy

unequal societies income distribution and the social contract this paper develops a theory of inequality and the social contract aiming to explain how countries with similar economic and political fundamentals can sustain such different systems of social insurance fiscal redistribution and education finance as those of the united states and western europe with imperfect credit and insurance markets some redistributive policies can improve ex ante welfare and this implies that their political support tends to decrease with inequality conversely with credit constraints lower redistribution translates into more persistent inequality hence the potential for multiple steady states with mutually reinforcing high inequality and low redistribution or vice versa

cross country variation in the impact of international migration canada mexico and the united states using data drawn from the canadian mexican and u s censuses we find a numerically comparable and statistically significant inverse relation between immigrant induced shifts in labor supply and wages in each of the three countries a 10 labor supply shift is associated with a 3 4 opposite signed change in wages despite the similarity in the wage response theimpactofmigrationonthewagestructuredifferssignificantlyacrosscountries international migration narrowed wage inequality in canada increased it in the united states and reduced the relative wage of workers at the bottom of the skill distribution in mexico jel j31 j61

credibility and policy convergence in a two party system with rational voters the traditional approach to modeling political parties behavior based upon the contribution of anthony downs 1957 assumes that the parties unique objective is to win elections thus they maximize their popularity the crucial implication of this assumption for a two party system is that if the two parties have the same information about voters preferences full convergence of policies results from electoral competition this is the crucial implication of the median voter theorem more generally it may be argued that different parties are motivated differently because they represent different constituencies parties may not care only about winning elections per se but also about the quality of the policies resulting from an election in this case the candidates of the two parties view winning an election not only as a goal per se but also as a means of implementing a better policy for their respective constituencies this paper shows that electoral competitions imply dynamic inconsistency if the voters are modeled as rational and forwardlooking agents and parties do not care exclusively about being elected but also about which policy to implement once elected the dynamic inconsistency arises as follows the parties have an incentive to announce convergent platforms to increase their chances of election however if the elected party is not committed to its electoral platform it has an incentive to follow its most preferred policy rather than the policy announced in its platform if voters are rational they account for this incentive thus in general in a one shot electoral game the only timeconsistent equilibrium is one in which no convergence is possible the two parties follow their most preferred policies and the voters rationally expect this outcome full convergence of parties platforms results only as a limiting case when the parties are completely indifferent with respect to the quality of the policies resulting from the election thus these results differ from the existing literature on ideologically motivated politicians for instance donald wittman 1977 1983 randall calvert 1985 which implicitly assumes the possibility of binding commitments to electoral platforms complete or partial policy convergence can be the outcome of political competition if the interaction between the parties and the voters is modeled as an infinitely repeated game in fact if the candidates have concave objective functions the welfare maximizing policy rule implies a complete convergence of parties policies however this cooperative and agreed upon policy may or may not be sustainable as a subgame perfect equilibrium depending on parameter values in particular it depends on the discount rates of the two parties the degree of polarization of their preferences and the relative popu graduate school of industrial administration carnegie mellon university pittsburgh pa 15213 and national bureau of economic research cambridge ma 02138 this paper is based upon a chapter of my unpublished doctoral dissertation at harvard university i am greatly indebted to jeffrey sachs for directing my attention toward these issues and for many conversations i also wish to thank andrew abel dilip abreu olivier blanchard ramon caminal andrew caplin alex cukierman morris fiorina benjamin friedman herschel grossman howard rosenthal and the referees for very useful comments the responsibilitv af anv n mtnkieis af calrirp nfnlv mine the result of policy convergence in a two party system is more general than the median voter theorem for discussions of convergence results not at the median see john ledyard 1984 peter coughlin 1984 coughlin and shmuel nitzan 1981 melvin hinich 1977 for earlier work on spatial competition see richard mckelvey 1975 hinich ledyard and peter ordeshook 1972 1973 and the references quoted therein the present paper focuses on the result of convergence rather than on the median voter theorem per se

balanced budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition this paper models balanced budget redistribution between socio economic groups as the outcome of electoral competition between two political parties equilibrium is unique in the present model and a sufficient condition for existence is given requiring that there be enough stochastic heterogeneity with respect to party preferences in the electorate the validity of hotelling s principle of minimum differentiation and of director s law are examined under alternative hypotheses concerning administrative costs of redistributions and voter s possibilities both of abstaining from voting and of becoming campaign activists for one of the parties the policy strategy of expected plurality maximization is contrasted with the strategy of maximizing the probability of gaining a plurality incomes are fixed and known so lump sum taxation is feasible however constraints on tax transfer differentiation between individuals are permitted in the analysis

on the form of transfers to special interests an important question in political economy concerns the form of transfers to special interests the chicago view is that political competition leads politicians to make such transfers efficiently the virginia position is that lack of information on the part of voters leads politicians to favor inefficient sneaky methods of redistribution this paper analyzes the form of transfers in a model of political competition in which politicians have incentives to make transfers to special interests it shows that when voters have imperfect information about both the effects of policy and the predispositions of politicians inefficient methods of redistribution may be employed

the heterogeneity of socially responsible investment many writers have commented on the heterogeneity of the socially responsible investment sri movement however few have actually tried to understand and explain it and even fewer have discussed whether the opposite standardisation is possible and desirable in this article we take a broader perspective on the issue of the heterogeneity of sri we distinguish between four levels on which heterogeneity can be found the terminological definitional strategic and practical whilst there is much talk about the definitional ambiguities of sri we suggest that there is actually some agreement on the definitional level there are at least three explanations which we suggest can account for the heterogeneity on the other levels cultural and ideological differences between different regions differences in values norms and ideology between various sri stakeholders and the market setting of sri discussing the implications of the three explanations for the sri market we suggest that there is reason to be sceptical about the possibilities of standardisation if not standardisation is imposed top down whether this kind of standardisation is desirable or not we argue depends on what the motives for it would be to the extent that standardisation may facilitate the mainstreaming of sri it could be a good thing but we entertain doubts about whether mainstreaming really requires standardisation

a positive theory of fiscal deficits and government debt this paper considers an economy in which policymakers with different preferences alternate in office as a result of elections government debt is used strategically by each policymaker to influence the choices of his successors if different policymakers disagree about the desired composition of government spending between two public goods the economy exhibits a deficits bias that is debt accumulation is higher than it would be with a social planner the equilibrium level of debt is larger the larger is the degree of polarization between alternating governments and the less likely it is that the current government will be re elected

how cynical can an incumbent be strategic policy in a model of government spending abstract when parties with different preferences compete for election strategic manipulation of state variables for electoral purposes can occur even with rational voters this paper presents a model in which government resources can be used productivity for the benefit of everybody or unproductively for the benefit of the ruling party s constituency a government more inclined to unproductive spending may choose to collect public resources inefficiently in order to produce the importance of spending decisions in the election the model highlights the strategic role of policy decisions that affect incentives and constraints faced by future governments and their impact on election results

attenuation bias in measuring the wage impact of immigration although economic theory predicts an inverse relation between relative wages and immigration induced supply shifts it has been difficult to document such effects the weak evidence may be partly due to sampling error in a commonly used measure of the supply shift the immigrant share of the workforce after controlling for permanent factors that determine wages in specific labor markets little variation remains in the immigrant share we find significant sampling error in this measure of supply shifts in canadian and u s census data correcting for the resulting attenuation bias can substantially increase existing estimates of the wage impact of immigration

incumbent performance and electoral control in the pure theory of electoral competition citizens compare the platforms of the candidates and vote for the one whose platform is preferred candidate strategies are identified with promises about future performance in office models of this sort have been developed in both static mckelvey 1975 and dynamic kramer 1977 i settings and all appear to have the property that if the set of alternatives is large enough in some sense equilibrium platforms rarely exist but these models have another feature that is quite as disturbing as their instability in the static setting discussed by mckelvey little attention is paid to the possibility that once in office the politician s preferences may diverge from those of his constituents and that he may therefore choose policies at variance from his platform instead it is simply assumed that promises will be kept whether or not such behavior is congruent with the interest of the officeholder it is sometimes argued that an enforcement mechanism may exist to discipline politicians for failing to keep promises but without a specification of the mechanism it is not obvious that it would be in the interests of the

the politics of ambiguity politicians face a trade off between the policies that maximize their chances of reelection and their most preferred policies or the policies most preferred by the constituency which they represent this paper analyzes this trade off in a dynamic electoral model in which the voters are not fully informed about the preferences of the incumbent first we show that the incumbent follows a policy which is intermediate between the other party s ideal policy and his own ideal policy second we show that often the incumbent has an incentive to choose procedures which make it difficult for voters to pinpoint his preferences with absolute precision thus politicians may prefer to be ambiguous

why a stubborn conservative would run a deficit policy with time inconsistent preferences a conservative government in favor of a low level of public consumption knows that it will be replaced by a government in favor of a larger level of public consumption we show that the resulting level of public consumption is in between the levels the two governments would choose if each were in power both in the present and in the future in particular we show that if the conservative government is more stubborn in a particular sense than the succeeding government the conservative government will borrow more than it would had it remained in power in the future

power fluctuations and political economy we study constrained pareto e cient allocations in a dynamic production economy where the group that holds political power decides the allocation of resources for high discount factors the economy converges to a rst best allocation where labor supply decisions are not distorted for low discount factors distortions do not disappear and uctuate over time most importantly the set of sustainable rst best allocations is larger when there is less persistence in the identity of the party in power because this encourages political compromise this result contradicts the common presumption that there will be fewer distortions when there is a stable ruling group

the disadvantage of tying their hands on the political economy of policy commitments incumbents are more likely to be re elected if they have a comparative advantage in the eyes of voters on some central issue this paper argues that incumbents have an incentive to avoid reforms that reduce the government s role in deciding these issues in order to increase their chances of re election this point is illustrated in the context of the choice of an exchange rate regime in an economy characterized by an inflation bias a flexible exchange rate allows the government to use monetary policy as a stabilization tool while fixed exchange rates remove the inflation bias of the economy on the one hand it is shown that a more inflation averse government may refrain from choosing fixed exchange rates in order to capitalize on the inflationary reputation of its opponent this incentive is contrasted with the opposite incentive to tie the hands of the future government should be incumbent be defeated on the other hand it is shown that electoral considerations may reinforce the incentive of the more inflationary government to tie its own hands with fixed exchange rates

the survival of the welfare state this paper provides an analytical characterization of markov perfect equilibria in a model with repeated voting where agents vote over distortionary income redistribution a key result is that the future constituency for redistributive policies depends positively on current redistribution since this affects both private investments and the future distribution of voters the model features multiple equilibria in some equilibria positive redistribution persists forever in other equilibria even a majority of beneficiaries of redistribution vote strategically so as to induce the end of the welfare state next period skill biased technical change makes the survival of the welfare state less likely

ideology tactics and efficiency in redistributive politics we model the electoral politics of redistribution when voters and parties care about inequality in addition to their private concerns for consumption and votes respectively ideological concerns about income redistribution lead each party to adopt a general proportional income tax adjusted to appeal to the ideological leanings of high clout groups with disproportionately many swing voters which the parties also ply with pork barrel projects our results relate to director s law which says that redistributive politics favors middle classes at the expense of both rich and poor

sources of inefficiency in a representative democracy a dynamic analysis this paper studies the efficiency of policy choice in representative democracies it extends the citizen candidate model of democratic policy making to a dynamic environment equilibrium policy choices are shown to be efficient in the sense that in each period conditional on future policies being selected through the democratic process there exists no alternative current policy choices which can raise the expected utilities of all citizens however policies that would be declared efficient by standard economic criteria are not necessarily adopted in political equilibrium the paper argues that these divergencies are legitimately viewed as politicalfailures

economic policy economic performance and elections this paper explores the role of reelection pressures in determining economic policy by assuming that voters are uncertai n as to the efficacy of different policies a reelection process is derived that depends on both a politician s past policies and the level of economic activity during his time in office it is shown th at the less uncertain are voters as to which policy is best the more likely is a politician to manipulate policy for reelection purposes manipulation entails implementing the policy that is more likely to be well received rather than the one that maximizes income copyright 1993 by american economic association

vested interests in a positive theory of stagnation and growth we study a positive theory of stagnation and growth aimed at understanding the large variations in growth outcomes across actual economies the theory points to the fundamental role played by vested interests in determining policies which are key to the growth process some agents seek to prevent the adoption of new technologies we develop a model of technology adoption and show how technological innovation may sow the seeds of its own destruction in particular we find that the equilibrium is characterized by a long cycle of stagnation and growth over this cycle incumbents are phased out of the economy will new innovation occur in formalizing our theory we make a methodological contribution by characterizing dynamic voting equilibria when voters must forecast the effects of different current policies on future prices and policy outcomes

a theory of political entrenchment can an incumbent political party increase its chances at re election by implementing inefficient policies that harm its constituency this paper studies the possibility of such a phenomenon which we label political entrenchment we use a two party dynamic model of redistribution with probabilistic voting political entrenchment by the left occurs only if incumbency rents are sufficiently high low skill citizens may vote for this party even though they rationally expect the adoption of these policies we discuss the possibility of entrenchment by the right the scope for commitment to avoid entrenchment policies and the effect of state capacity income inequality and party popularity on the likelihood of entrenchment we illustrate our theory with a number of historical examples

a model of political competition with citizen candidates the authors develop a model of electoral competition in which citizens choose whether or not to run as candidates a winner implements her favorite policy the equilibrium number of candidates depends negatively on the cost of running and positively on the benefits of winning for some parameter values all equilibria under plurality rule have exactly two candidates whose positions are distinct two candidate elections are more likely under plurality rule than under a runoff system the candidates positions are less differentiated under a runoff system there exist equilibria under both systems in which some candidates have no chance of winning