Inspired by the current European developments, we study equilibrium fiscal policy under alternative "federal" arrangements. Our model has two levels of government. Local policy redistributes across individuals and affects the probability of aggregate shocks, whereas federal policy shares...

This paper develops a generalised version of the life-cycle model in which consumers’ preferences are defined over components of consumption and are affected by the level of public expenditure on goods and services. The model implies that the crowding out of private consumption could in fact...

This paper studies the relation between political polarization and delegation of stabilization policy. There is asymmetric information about how the economy works: unlike voters, two political parties know the variance of an employment shock. Prior to an election each party proposes a central...

This paper considers the optimal allocation by a donor country of a given amount of foreign aid between two recipient countries. It is shown that, ceteris paribus, a country following a more restrictive trade policy would receive a smaller share of the aid if the donor country maximises its own...

This paper establishes, in a very general setting, necessary and sufficient conditions for harmonization of economic policies to be welfare-improving. As an application, it is shown that under circumstances in which harmonization is known to be welfare-improving when taxes are levied on a...

This paper analyses how job security policies, which in practice result in higher firing costs, affect long-run employment and investment in a two country model with free trade in goods and capital. The effects turn out to depend crucially on the preferences of trade unions, and in particular on...

In American Insurance Association v. Garamendi, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated California's Holocaust Victim Insurance Relief Act (HVIRA), which required insurance companies doing business in California to disclose all policies they or their affiliates sold in Europe between 1920 and 1945....

"The political liberty of the subject," said Montesquieu, "is a tranquility of mind arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to have this liberty, it is requisite the government be so constituted as one man needs not be afraid of another." The liberty of which Montesquieu...

Procedural Justice offers a theory of procedural fairness for civil dispute resolution. The Article begins in Part I, Introduction, with two observations. First, the function of procedure is to particularize general substantive norms so that they can guide action. Second, the hard problem of...

Using as a point of reference the Ninth Circuit's assertion in Newdow v. United States Congress that "[a] profession that we are a nation "under God" is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation "under Jesus," a nation "under Vishnu," a nation "under...