Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, New York: Random House, 1987; and Joshua S. Goldstein, Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. Copyright 1989 Blackwell Publishers Ltd..

A rent or transfer is politically contestable when policy decisions are subject to influence by potential beneficiaries and losers. This paper studies contestablility of rents and transfers when contenders place different valuations on the politically allocated prize. Asymmetric valuation...

The theory of endogenous trade policy formation argues that tariffs emerge from the political process. This occurs because of conflicting economic interests trying to redistribute income in their favor through the adoption of suitable trade policies. Mayer and Riezman (1987) questioned this view...

This paper provides new tests of the recently developed theory of rational partisan business cycles. According to the theory, resolution of uncertainty about electoral consequences and partisan differences in economic behavior produce downturns following victories of conservative parties and...

This paper constructs a model in which taxation and public expenditure decisions are made by two decision makers: a "benevolent planner," who treats all consumers equally in the measurement of welfare; and a "Leviathan planner," who places more weight on the utilities of "favored consumers." The...

When individuals choose not only goods, but also how to process information, there is a bias: people tend to process information so that they feel good about themselves. This bias is particularly important in voting behavior, where agents have almost no individual effect on public choice...

The repeal of the Corn Laws in Britain in 1846 has been much debated as to whether interest groups or ideology contributed most to this policy reform. This paper examines a conventional view that Sir Robert Peel, in proposing repeal, converted from protection to free trade under the influence of...