There is an extensive empirical literature on political business cycles, but its theoretical foundations are grounded in pre-rational expectations macroeconomic theory. Here we show that electoral cycles in taxes, government spending and money growth can be modeled as an equilibrium signaling process. The cycle is driven by temporary information asymmetries which can arise if, for example, the government has more current information on its performance in providing for national defence. Incumbents cheat least when their private information is either extremely favourable or extremely unfavourable. An exogeneous increase in the incumbent party's popularity does not necessarily imply a damped policy cycle.

Abstract Can massive online retailers such as Amazon and Alibaba issue digital tokens that potentially compete with bank debit accounts? There is a long history of trading stamps and loyalty points, but new technologies are poised to sharply raise the significance of redeemable assets as a store of value. Here, we develop a simple stylized model of redeemable tokens that can be used to study sales and pricing strategies for issuing tokens, including ICOs. Our central finding is that platforms can potentially earn higher revenues by making tokens non-tradable unless they can generate a sufficiently high outside-platform convenience yield.