In this paper we argue that different preferences in a decentralized system lead to under provision of public goods. We analyze the provision of public primary education in nineteenth-century Prussia which was characterized by a linguistically polarized society and a decentralized education...

How can the West's economic and political polarization be explained? We argue that persuasive lobbying at various levels of government leads to systematic deviations of policies from those desired by the majority. Implemented policies diverge from the majority position despite centripetal forces...

This paper presents a model of political competition to explore the effect that the ideological distance between two political parties has over the provision of public goods. The main result argues that the ideological distance between parties and citizens has a negative relationship with the...

How can the West’s economic and political polarization be explained? We argue that persuasive lobbying at various levels of government leads to systematic deviations of policies from those desired by the majority. Implemented policies diverge from the majority position despite centripetal...

We consider a political economy model of country whose citizens have heterogeneous preferences for a national policy and some regions may contemplate a threat of secession. The country is efficient if its break-up into smaller countries leads to aggregate utility loss. We show that in an...

In this paper we introduce the stability threshold that quantifies the minimal returns to size sufficient to prevent credible secession threats by regions of the country. Severity of internal tension has been linked to degree of polarization of citizens' preferences and characteristics. We show...

In this paper we introduce the notion of stability threshold that quantifies the minimal returns to size sufficient to prevent credible secession threats by regions of the country. Severity of internal tension has been linked to degree of polarization of citizens' preferences and...

We develop a conflict model linking dissipation to the distribution of the population over an arbitrary number of groups. We extend the pure contest version of the model by Esteban and Ray (1999) to include a mixed public-private good. We analyze how the level of dissipation changes as the...

Monitoring health is key for identifying priorities in public health planning and improving healthcare services. Life expectancy has conventionally been regarded as a valuable indicator to compare the health status of different populations. However, this measure is simply the mean of the...