This article offers an overview of the empirical and theoretical research on the long run evolution of wealth and inheritance. Wealth-income ratios, inherited wealth, and wealth inequalities were high in the 18th-19th centuries up untilWorldWar 1, then sharply dropped during the 20th century...

In elections that take place in a less-than-perfect democracy, incumbency advantages are different from those in mature democracies. The incumbent can prevent credible challengers from running, organize vote fraud, or even physically eliminate the main opponents. At the same time, formally...

This Paper examines recent theoretical developments in the theory of coalition stability. It focuses on the relationship between the incentives to defect from a coalition, the size of the resulting equilibrium coalition structure and the different assumptions on membership rules, coalition...

This Paper provides a first applied game theory analysis of a technology-based climate protocol by assessing: (i) the self-enforcement (namely, the absence of incentives to free ride) of the coalition that would form when countries negotiate on climate-related technological cooperation; (ii) the...

The ageing of the population shakes the confidence in the economic viability of pay-as-you-go social security systems. We demonstrate how in a political-economy framework the shaken confidence leads to the downsizing of the social security-system, and to the emergence of supplemental individual...

We present a theoretical model of a parliamentary democracy, where party structures, government coalitions and fiscal policies are endogenously determined. The model predicts that, relative to proportional elections, majoritarian elections reduce government spending because they reduce party...

Nowadays, people in OECD countries spend about as much time watching television as earning a living. In this Paper I report a puzzling fact about those time uses: television viewing and work hours are positively correlated across countries. A simple model based on complementarities in the...

Using U.K. microeconomic data, we analyze the empirical determinants of voluntary annuity market demand. We find that annuity market participation increases with financial wealth, life expectancy and education and decreases with other pension income and a pos- sible bequest motive for surviving...

In recent theories of comparative development the role of institutional differences has been crucial. Yet what explains comparative institutional evolution? We investigate this issue by studying the coffee exporting economies of Latin America. While homogeneous in many ways, they experienced...

Many international treaties come into force only after a minimum number of countries have signed and ratified the treaty. Why do countries agree to introduce a minimum participation constraint among the rules characterizing an international treaty? This question is particularly relevant in the...