Constitutions and Economic Policy

2 Economic Analysis of Constitutions

This paper is a preliminary draft of an article to appear in Chicago Law Review (2000), as part of a symposium reviewing two new books on economic analysis of constitutions: Dennis Mueller's Constitutional Democracy and Robert Cooter's Strategic Constitution. Some of the basic questions of constitutional analysis are introduced, and the importance of work in this area is shown as one of the maj...

Constitutions and Economic Development: Evidence from the American Indian Nations

Constitutions and Economic Development: Evidence from the American Indian Nations This paper presents an empirical examination of economic and institutional development. Utilizing a novel data set on American Indian tribal nations, we investigate how constitutional design affects economic development, while holding the broader legal and political environment fixed. Instrumental variables regres...

Transparency and Economic Policy

We provide a multiperiod model of political competition in which voters imperfectly observe the electoral promises made to other voters. Imperfect observability generates an incentive for candidates to offer excessive transfers even if voters are homogeneous and taxation is distortionary. Government spending is larger than in a world of perfect observability. Transfers are partly financed throu...

Constitutions and Democratic Breakdowns

Policy Evaluation and Economic Policy Advice Christoph

Policy Evaluation and Economic Policy Advice Arguably, one of the most important developments in the field of applied economics during the last decades has been the emergence of systematic policy evaluation, with its distinct focus on the establishment of causality. By contrast to the natural sciences, the objects of our scientific interest typically exert some influence on their treatment stat...