This paper investigates married women’s hours worked disaggregated by the husband’s wage decile. In the United States, this pattern has changed from downward sloping to hump shaped. We show that this development can be explained within a standard household model of labor supply when taking...

Standard majority-voting models predict that redistribution is positively linked to the mean-to-median income ratio but empirical evidence is mixed. This paper shows that the different empirical reactions to rising mean-to-median income ratios can be rationalized in a simple...

Preventive policy measures such as bailouts often pass parliament very narrowly. We present a model of asymmetric information between politicians and voters which rationalizes this narrow parliamentary outcome. A successful preventive policy impedes the verification of its own necessity. When...