In 2011, Portugal was subjected to one of the most stringent austerity packages implemented during the Eurozone crisis, a package known as the troika program. The interpretation of the effects of this program led to a vivid confrontation between two opposing views. A Keynesian view stressed the...

A constitution remains in force so long as no party wishes to defect to the non-cooperative situation, and it is reinstituted as soon as each party finds it to its advantage to revert to cooperation. It is the rich, and not the poor segments of society who in our model pose the greater threat to...

This paper analyzes how political stability depends on economic factors. Fluctuations in groups' economic capacities and in their abilities to engage in rent-seeking or predatory behavior create periodic incentives for those groups to renege on their social obligations. A constitution remains in...