We argue that centralized and decentralized environmental governance yield equivalent environmental regulations. We model worker, environmental, and capital owner lobby groups that seek influence by offering political contributions. Worker lobbying in the decentralized case has an effect on...

"Deindustrialization, stagnant real incomes of production workers, and increasing inequality are latter day features of many economies. It is common to assume that such developments pressure policymakers to relax environmental standards. However, when heavily polluting industries become less...

This paper tests a variant of the standard endogenous tariff model under direct democracy (the Downs-Mayer model) with a gender gap. Specifically, the authors argue that, if there is a division of economic activity between men and women and political preferences are affected by one's...

The authors argue that legislator shirking (voting on the basis of personal ideology rather than the interests of one's constituents) can exist, but its appearance should conform to the law of demand. They test and confirm this theory using votes on defense expenditure bills in the U.S. Senate...