Abstract Does citizens’ voting behavior influence government policy? Conventional models of democratic representation assume that issue by citizens induces responsiveness to preferences. However, existing research has not tested whether makes any difference responsiveness. We present a theoretical model and policy leverage Swedish election study panels corresponding dataset on implementation em...

The merits of alternative income tax policies depend on the population distribution of preferences for income, leisure, and public goods. Standard theory, which supposes that persons want more income and more leisure, does not predict how they resolve the tension between these desires. Empirical studies of labor supply have been numerous but have not shed much light on the matter. A persistent ...

We study dynamic electoral competition with partisan policy feedbacks (a situation in which a policy systematically affects the electorate’s future political preferences) in a public finance environment. Two parties with diverging preferences over redistribution choose socially undesirable levels of public employment because employment status systematically affects a citizen’s beliefs about red...

This paper identifies conditions under which voters are better off not knowing the policy choices of incumbents: we show that government transparency can actually lower voter welfare. To do so, we analyze a model of political agency where voters face two forms of uncertainty: uncertainty about the incumbent’s policy preferences and uncertainty about the relationship between policies and outcome...

We consider the climate-policy implications of non-constant time preferences when there is no commitment to future policies. The conceptual and quantitative results follow from the observation that, with time-declining discounting, the unusual delays and persistence of climate impacts provide a commitment device for climate policy-makers, overturning a fundamental climate-policy conclusion from...