This paper sets a framework for analysing how memoryless voters may come to elect and re-elect a committed policy-maker. Policy-makers, we assume, are trusted to implement the policy that they announce ex ante (and do implement it, if elected and re-elected). Voters, however, are never bound by...

The dynamic inconsistency of a government's preferred policy, when it occurs, usually implies that the maximum level of welfare that can be delivered at some initial time can only be attained by constraining the economy to `low' levels in the future. In this paper, we set up a linear quadratic...