To study the political economy of immigration, we develop a common agency model where a trade union and a lobby of entrepreneurs offer contributions to the government to influence its decision on how many immigrants can enter the domestic economy. In the political equilibrium, anticipating that...

We develop a political economy model of Schumpeterian growth with entry where excessive red tape and bureaucracy are used strategically by the incumbent politician to acquire incumbency advantage. By setting sufficiently high red tape, the politician induces the monopolist to invest in...

In this paper we perform an empirical analysis to investigate the impact of socio-economic heterogeneity on electoral turnout. We exploit a unique dataset on local elections in an Italian municipality, which merges information on socio-economic characteristics of about 370.000 individuals with...

We use a political economy model of Schumpeterian growth with entry to investigate how an incumbent politician can strategically use the level of red tape to acquire incumbency advantage. By setting sufficiently high red tape, the politician induces the incumbent firm in the intermediate sector...

This paper provides an explanation for the existence of child labour which relies on the imperfect enforcement of compulsory schooling laws. In the presence of complementarities in the production of human capital that justify legislative intervention, mandatory measures ensure that coordination...