This paper considers an organizational aspect of the market in which votes are exchanged for public-policy outcomes. Specifically, the effect on the stability and behavior of politicians of assigning the demanders of political products (i.e., voters) to geographic areas is addressed. Implications concerning the locational division of the "buyers" of political outcomes for collusive efforts by existing officeholders to restrict entry are drawn and tested empirically. The results indicate in effect that the institutional structure of political markets is an important aspect of the degree of rivalry among existing politicians and hence the extent of entry by nonincumbent candidates.

This paper considers an organizational aspect of the market in which votes are exchanged for public-policy outcomes. Specifically, the effect on the stability and behavior of politicians of assigning the demanders of political products (i.e., voters) to geographic areas is addressed. Implications concerning the locational division of the "buyers" of political outcomes for collusive efforts by existing officeholders to restrict entry are drawn and tested empirically. The results indicate in effect that the institutional structure of political markets is an important aspect of the degree of rivalry among existing politicians and hence the extent of entry by nonincumbent candidates.

This paper examines how well the basic properties of the traditional 2 × 2 model of a competitive economy, commonly used in much of the pure theory of international trade, generalize when more goods and factors are considered. The notion of factor intensity and the Hekscher-Ohlin, Stolper-Samuelson, and Rybczynski theorems are discussed. The role played by the no-joint-production assumption as opposed to small dimensionality in the latter two results is stressed. The mathematical appendix provides a compact and formal statement of the properties discussed in the text.

This paper contrasts consumer choice under uncertain lifetimes with the behavior that would arise if each individual's lifetime were announced at birth. In a model that includes life insurance and excludes investments in human capital, the expected utility under uncertain lifetimes exceeds that under known lifetimes when the latter expectation is based on preannouncement survival probabilities. This conclusion emerges, first, because the model without human capital contains no planning benefits from knowledge of the horizon and, second, because the prior announcement of lifetimes forces risk-averse consumers to undertake an extra gamble that they could otherwise avoid by using life insurance.

This paper examines how well the basic properties of the traditional 2 × 2 model of a competitive economy, commonly used in much of the pure theory of international trade, generalize when more goods and factors are considered. The notion of factor intensity and the Hekscher-Ohlin, Stolper-Samuelson, and Rybczynski theorems are discussed. The role played by the no-joint-production assumption as opposed to small dimensionality in the latter two results is stressed. The mathematical appendix provides a compact and formal statement of the properties discussed in the text.

This paper contrasts consumer choice under uncertain lifetimes with the behavior that would arise if each individual's lifetime were announced at birth. In a model that includes life insurance and excludes investments in human capital, the expected utility under uncertain lifetimes exceeds that under known lifetimes when the latter expectation is based on preannouncement survival probabilities. This conclusion emerges, first, because the model without human capital contains no planning benefits from knowledge of the horizon and, second, because the prior announcement of lifetimes forces risk-averse consumers to undertake an extra gamble that they could otherwise avoid by using life insurance.