We develop a model for fiscal and monetary policy determination in the tradition of Sargent and Wallace (1981). Ex-ante, the government has incentives to delegate monetary policy to a central bank with an inflation targeting mandate. Ex-post, however, the government faces temptations to revoke the mandate to generate seigniorage revenues. The likelihood that the government…

Local elected officials oversee critical infrastructure, often with limited electoral accountability. This paper studies how this distorts investment across California drinking-water systems. We document that pollution responds to shifts in the political environment, motivating a dynamic model of public investment. We measure welfare returns to investment directly, combining event-study estimates of investment effectiveness and costs…