Stable, enforceable property rights over resources normally furthers economic efficiency. The author argues that stable rights to government created rents and wealth transfers, by contrast, generate inefficiency. Secure rights to receive transfers increases rent-seekers' incentive to make...

I extend the standard rent seeking model to allow lobbying for a constitutional prohibition on wealth transfers. I examine two issues: (1) the ability of special interests with significant political capacity to block constitutional change; and (2) the effect of adding a constitutional stage on...

Studies of traffic safety typically assume that policies are adopted to further the public interest, thereby ignoring the political motives for policy. Since political motives can influence the design or enforcement of policies, accounting for political motives has relevance for evaluating...

I investigate whether attempts by the media to determine a candidate's fitness for office lowers the average quality of public officials, what I call the media scrutiny paradox. Media scrutiny imperfectly signals heterogeneous candidates' type, but imposes privacy costs and reputational costs on...

We analyze the welfare gains from the reform of existing government-induced distortions. Our results provide support for policies aimed at eliminating monopoly and other types of economic distortion. Welfare gains over the status quo exist whenever deregulation occurs. The threat of deregulation...

Right-wing politicians sometimes can implement policies that left-wing politicians cannot, and vice versa. Contemporary wisdom has it that 'only Nixon could have gone to China.' The authors develop a model to explain this phenomenon. A policy issue could depend on information, on which every one...