Do political institutions shape economic policy? I argue that this question should naturally appeal to economists. Moreover, the answer is in the affirmative, both in theory and in practice. In particular, recent theoretical work predicts systematic effects of electoral rules and political regimes on the size and composition of government spending. Results from ongoing empirical work indicate that such effects are indeed present in the data. Some empirical results are consistent with theoretical predictions: presidential regimes have smaller governments and countries with majoritarian elections have smaller welfare-state programs and less corruption. Other results present puzzles for future research: the adjustment to economic events appears highly institution-dependent, as does the timing and nature of the electoral cycle.

The authors study collective choice of fiscal policy in 'federations.' Local policy redistributes across individuals and affects the probability of local shocks. Federal policy shares international risk but may induce local governments to enact policies that increase local risk. The resulting trade-off between risk-sharing and moral hazard is different under alternative fiscal constitutions because the constitutions create different incentives for policymakers and voters and give rise to different political equilibria. The authors specifically contrast vertically ordered systems, like the European Community, with horizontally ordered systems, like the United States. Under appropriate institutions, centralization of functions and power can mitigate the moral hazard problem. Copyright 1996 by The Econometric Society.

Does democracy promote economic development? This paper reviews recent attempts to address this question that exploited within-country variation. It shows that the answer is largely positive, but also depends on the details of democratic reforms. First, the sequence of economic vs political reforms matters: countries liberalizing their economy before extending political rights do better. Second, different forms of democratic government lead to different economic policies, and this might explain why presidential democracy leads to faster growth than parliamentary democracy. Third, it is important to distinguish between expected and actual political reforms. Taking expectations of regime change into account helps identify a stronger growth effect of democracy.

We investigate the effect of electoral rules and forms of government on fiscal policy outcomes in a large sample of democracies. We rely on different estimation methods to address prospective problems of statistical inference, due to nonrandom selection of these constitutional rules. The findings are consistent with our theoretical priors: presidential regimes induce smaller governments than parliamentary democracies, while majoritarian elections lead to smaller governments and smaller welfare programs than proportional elections.

This paper studies the political and economic determinants of regional public transfers. Specifically, it focuses on how such transfers are shaped by alternative fiscal constitutions, where a constitution is an allocation of fiscal instruments across different levels of governments plus a procedure for the collective choice of these instruments. Realistic restrictions on fiscal instruments introduce a trade-off between risk sharing and redistribution. Different constitutions produce very different results. In particular, a federal social insurance scheme, chosen by voting, provides overinsurance, whereas an intergovernmental transfer scheme, chosen by bargaining, provides underinsurance. Copyright 1996 by University of Chicago Press.

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.

This paper develops a simple model to analyse how a lack of political competition may lead to policies that hinder economic growth. We test the predictions of the model on panel data for the US states. In these data, we find robust evidence that lack of political competition in a state is associated with anti-growth policies: higher taxes, lower capital spending, and a reduced likelihood of using rightto- work laws. We also document a strong link between low political competition and low income growth.

This paper develops a simple general equilibrium model of a monetary economy with a capital market. Money demand arises from a “cash-in-advance” constraint rather than from any direct role in the utility function, and uncertainty gives rise to a meaningful portfolio choice between money and bonds. We show that velocity is increasing in the rate of inflation, and that the optimal monetary policy is that which maximizes real balances. We also show that the real rate of interest is not invariant to monetary, policy: inflation lowers the real rate.