The existence of a natural resources curse is widely accepted in academic and policy circles. With its focus on institutional quality, the resource curse thesis is symptomatic of the current "good governance" agenda. This paper subjects the thesis to critical evaluation and finds it wanting. It...

Generally, Democrats do not increase military spending, and Republicans do not raise welfare payments. Mostly, ruling politicians stick to the manifesto of their party. The current paper provides a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon that does not assume politicians or voters to be...

Standard models of equilibrium unemployment assume exogenous labour market institutions and flexible wage determination. This paper models wage rigidity and collective bargaining endogenously, when workers differ by observable skill and may adopt either individualised or collective wage...

We consider hedonic coalition formation games that are induced by a simple TU-game and a cooperative solution. For such models, Shenoy's (1979) absence of the paradox of smaller coalitions provides a sufficient condition for core existence. We present three different versions of his condition in...