This paper studies politicians who have a present-bias for spending; they want to increase current spending and procrastinate spending cuts. We argue that legislators' bias is more severe in economies with low institutional quality. We show that disagreement in legislatures leads to policy...

This paper contributes to a large literature studying the interaction between institution and fiscal outcomes. We provide two general contributions. First, we argue that we should not take it for granted that there exist institutions that work well in all environments: specific institutions may...

In modern democracies, public policies are negotiated among elected policymakers. Yet, most macroeconomic models abstract from post-election negotiation. In order to understand the determinants of redistribution, this paper studies legislative bargaining in a growth model where individuals are...

This paper analyzes the standard Neoclassical growth model where agents are heterogeneous in their initial wealth. Wealth can be taxed in order to finance equal lump-sum transfers. We consider a representative democracy where elected officials select the current capital tax by playing a...