Politicians are expected to influence policy outcomes in a way to gain electoral advantage. There is, however, a pending question whether efficiency in the provision of public goods and services is affected by strategic behavior. I examine how electoral cycles influence local government...

We argue that measurement error in historical price data has led researchers to erroneously believe that there was little persistence of inflation during the 19th century. Using a statistical technique that accounts for these errors, we estimate the persistence of (a) US inflation and (b)...