Stabilization programs in open economies typically consist of two stages. In the first stage, the rate of currency devaluation is reduced, but the fiscal adjustment do es not eliminate the fiscal deficit that causes growth of debt and lo ss of reserves, making a future policy change necessary....

Standard one-sector growth models often have the counterfactual implication that economies with access to similar technologies will converge to a common balanced growth path. The authors propose an elaboration of the Diamond model that permits multiple, locally stable stationary states. This...

Standard models of policy credibility, defined as the expectation that an announced policy will be carried out, emphasize the preferences of the policymaker and the role of tough policies in signaling toughness and raising credibility. Whether a policy is carried out, however, will also reflect...

Politicians face a trade-off between the policies that maximize their chances of reelection and their most preferred policies (or the policies most preferred by the constituency which they represent). This paper analyzes this trade-off in a dynamic electoral model in which the voters are not...

This paper studies the equilibrium determination of the number of countries in different political regimes, and in different economic environments, with more or less economic integration. The authors focus on the trade-off between the benefits of large jurisdictions and the costs of...

The authors study the relationship between politics and economic growth in a simple model of endogenous growth with distributive conflict among agents endowed with varying capital/labor shares. They establish several results regarding the factor ownership of the median individual and the level...

This paper studies what determines group formation and the degree of participation when the population is heterogeneous, both in terms of income and race or ethnicity. We are especially interested in whether and how much the degree of heterogeneity in communities influences the amount of...

We present a model that links heterogeneity of preferences across ethnic groups in a city to the amount and type of public goods the city supplies. We test the implications of the model with three related data sets: U. S. cities, U. S. metropolitan areas, and U. S. urban counties. Results show...