We live in an interconnected world, where security problems like terrorism are spilling
across borders, and globalized data networks and e-commerce platforms are reshaping the …

From home mortgages to i-phones, basic elements of our daily lives depend on international
economic markets. The astonishing complexity of these exchanges may seem ungoverned …

Although ensuring the “accountability” of agents to their principals is widely considered a
core objective of institutional design, recent work in political economy has identified and …

The lion's share of policy in the United States is made by administrative agencies. Agencies
not only make policy choices, they must also implement policy effectively. Oversight …

Voters are frequently ill-equipped to monitor politicians' actions. Politicians are expected to
implement projects, whose benefits sometimes partially accrue to interest groups (IGs) and …

We study a dynamic model in which a politician (most commonly an executive) makes
authority claims that are subject to a hard constraint (administered, typically, by a court). At …

Separated powers cannot permanently constrain individual ambitions. Concerns about a
government's ability to respond to contemporary and future crises, we show, invariably …

The prevention of terrorist attacks is an important concern for many governments. In
democracies, officials also fear the electoral consequences of successful attacks. As a result …

International soft law has become a hallmark of global economic governance: networks of
official and private 'governors' create standards, best practices and norms. Research often …

I consider a series of models of political agency with moral hazard and adverse selection, in
which politicians allocate resources to voters. Within these models, which combine electoral …