This paper theorizes that the impact of ideology on the size of US state governments increases with state income. This idea is tested using state-level ideology data derived from the voting behavior of state congressional representatives. Empirically the interaction of ideology and mean income...

In the majority of democratic political systems, districts elect representatives, who form coalitions, which determine policies. In this paper we present a model which captures this process: A citizen-candidate model with multiple policy dimensions in which elected representatives endogenously...

This paper reconsiders Persson and Tabellini’s (2003,2004) analysis of the causal effect of constitution type on government size, it addresses the concerns of Acemoglu ( 2005) and makes some further refinements to argue that there is a qualitatively large, and statistically significant...

We analyze the impact of ideology on the size of government. In a simple model the government sets redistribution and provision of public services according to the preferences of the median voter, for whom private consumption is a necessity. Ideology is defined on preferences for public services...

This paper analyzes the impact of ideology on the size of US state governments. Following Pickering and Rockey (2011) this impact is hypothesized to increase with mean state income. This idea is tested using state-level ideology data derived from the voting behavior of state congressional...

We analyze the impact of ideology on the size of government. In a simple model, the government sets redistribution and provision of public services according to the preferences of the median voter. Ideology is defined in terms of preferences for public services, and the impact of ideology on the...

The labor share of income varies markedly across the set of democracies. A model of the political process, situated in a simple macroeconomic environment is analyzed in which the cause of this variation is linked to differences in the form of democracy - in particular the adoption of a...

This paper reconsiders Persson and Tabellini's (2003, 2004) analysis of the causal effect of constitution type on government size. It addresses the concerns of Acemoglu (2005) and makes some measurement and methodological refinements to the identification strategy to argue there is a...

A common assumption in political economy is that there exists a consistent and well defined policy space. Often, this space is assumed to be adequately represented by a single `left' - `right' dimension. This paper makes the case that it is not only convenient but also meaningful to talk of the...

The issue of model uncertainty is central to the empirical study of economic growth. Many recent papers use Bayesian Model Averaging to address model uncertainty, but Ciccone and Jarociński (2010) have questioned the approach on theoretical and empirical grounds. They argue that a standard...