This paper analyzes the interaction between ideological shirking by legislators and interest group activities in a two stage game between a legislator, a challenger, and an interest group. Some comparative statics results are derived. In some circumstances, campaign contributions decrease as the...

This paper analyzes the effect of population size on political participation and allocative efficiency. Increasing population is generally found to reduce political participation. However, since participation is not evenly spread throughout the population, this will have consequences for...

In this paper we use a simple median voter model to analyze the effects of tax systems with differing degrees of progressivity. We find that relatively high taxes on middle incomes have two important advantages: on the one hand, they help to ensure that all citizens are better off than they...

The paper deals with vertical tax competition between self-interested governments in a dynamic environment. In a federation, competition between the federal and the state governments arises when tax sources are not separated but pooled. Since dynamic inefficiencies will be stressed, the focus is...

Employing a political-economics approach, this paper compares small states and unions when the former fail to internalize cross-border externalities of publicly provided goods. It discusses two types of unions: federations with more than one level of government and unitary states. While unitary...