Stricter laws require more incisive and costlier enforcement. Because enforcement activity depends both on available tax revenue and the honesty of officials, the optimal legal standard of a benevolent government is increasing in per capita income and decreasing in officials' corruption. In...

In this article, we present a citizen-candidate model of representative democracy with endogenouslobbying.We find that lobbying induces policy compromise and always affects equilibrium policy outcomes. In particular, even though the policy preferences of lobbies are relatively extreme, lobbying...

We incorporate campaign contributions in the citizen-candidate model of representative democracy with endogenous lobbying of Felli and Merlo (2006). In equilibrium, lobbies contribute to the electoral campaign of candidates whose policy preferences are aligned with their own. In the event that...