We investigate possible explanations for the rhetorical gap that divides producers and influential consumers of economic knowledge, academic economists and policymakers, respectively. We argue that economics lacks a developed theory of how academic research influences political decision making....

Why do people diet? The proximate cause of dieting is a desire to lose weight, but, because there are different ways by which a person becomes heavier than he wants to be, the ultimate causes of the choice to diet vary. Using a simple, graphical model grounded in the physiology of weight...