Book excerpt: First published in 1997, this volume builds an economic model in which a model of the policy-formation process was grafted onto an economic model of the traditional kind. Politics are not made in a vacuum; they have their basis in the politico-economic system which economists have been modelling and analysing for a very long time. For economists, government policies are particularly important as they determine the environment within which all agents make their choices and the way in which the market allocates resources. Through an examination of tariffs and an equilibrium model of the economic sphere of a small open political economy, Hom Moorti Pant aims to explore some of the reasons and effects of government policy decisions on the economy.