Essays in political economy and public policy

This dissertation is divided into three essays. In the first essay I consider the classic puzzle of why election turnouts are persistently so high even though formal analysis strongly suggests that rational agents should not vote. If one assumes that voters do not make systematic mistakes, the most plausible explanation seems to be that agents receive benefits from the act of voting itself. However, this is very close to assuming the answer and begs the question of why agents feel this warm glow from participating in the electoral process. I approach the question from an evolutionary standpoint. I show that public-spirited agents have an evolutionary advantage over those who are not as public-spirited for a range of situations and that the policy preference of public-spirited agents is evolutionary stable.; My second essay considers the challenge, the start of e-commerce and dot-corn retailers have posed for the brick and mortar firms. In response to this challenge, most of B&M businesses adopted what is called a click-and-mortar strategy that uses the Web as both an alternative and a complement to the company's physical presence. In this essay I develop a simple model to investigate the competition between Web-only and B&M firms. I illustrate the conditions under which the B&M firm can survive the competition from the Web-only firm. I also investigate the possibility of B&M firm starting a money losing web branch to deter the Web-Only firm.; The third essay surveys the two prominent, theories that purport to explain the extent of public ownership. It then develops a model that puts these two theories into a common framework. The model is tested with a cross-country panel dataset. The results show that deficiencies in commitment and greater political pressure for control of employment are associated with larger public enterprise sectors. I also find that a higher opportunity cost of public funds tends to reduce the extent of state ownership except when commitment capability and pressure for employment control are low.