We present a simple theory of the quality (competence and honesty) of elected officials. Our theoryoffers three main insights. Low-quality citizens have a ‘comparative advantage’ in pursuing electiveoffice, because their market wages are lower than those of high-quality citizens...

This paper studies public-debt runs under alternative assumptions on the distribution oftaxes among tax bases, the distribution of debt among classes of taxpayers, and thedistributive preferences of the government. Asymmetries in the distribution of taxes--arising, for example, from income-tax...

This paper exploits the 2008–09 stamp duty holiday in the United Kingdom to estimate the incidence of a transaction tax on housing. The average reduction in the after-tax sale price is found to be around £900 against the backdrop of an average tax reduction of about £1500. While we estimate...