We exploit regional windfall gains arising from the Spanish Christmas Lottery to estimate the effect of disposable income on entrepreneurial activity. We find higher firm creation in winning provinces. Our estimates imply that 46 firms are created for every €1,000 increase in disposable income...

Can natural resource windfalls increase public debt in democracies? Adopting a political economy perspective, we show that the answer is in the affirmative. Resource windfalls increase both the government's income and wealth. The former mitigates the need to borrow, whereas the latter encourages...