A 2006 survey of 28,000 individuals in 28 post-communist countries reveals overwhelming support for revising privatization, but most respondents prefer to leave firms in private hands. We examine who wants to revise privatization and why. Respondents with poor human capital and few assets...

The determinants of government responsiveness to its citizens is a key issue in political economy. Here we develop a model based on the solution of political agency problems. Having a more informed and politically active electorate strengthens incentives for governments to be responsive. This...

One of the key goals of political economy is to understand how institutional arrangements shape policy outcomes. This paper studies a comparatively neglected aspect of this - the forces that shape heterogeneous performance of autocracies. The paper develops a simple theoretical model of...

We analyse politically motivated privatization design in a bipartisan environment where politicians lack commitment power. Suppose the median class voters a priori favour redistributive policies. If the privatization programme succeeds in allocating enough shares to these citizens, they become...

The Paper analyses the political decision that determines the degree of investor protection. We show that entrepreneurs and workers can strike a political agreement by which low investor protection is exchanged for high employment protection. This ‘corporatist’ agreement is feasible if the...

Legislation affects corporate governance and the return to human and financial capital. We allow the preference of a political majority to determine both the governance structure and the extent of labour rents. In a society where median voters have relatively more at stake in the form of human...

This paper presents a political economy model where there is mutual feedback between investor protection and stock market development. Better investor protection induces companies to issue more equity and thereby leads to a broader stock market. In turn, equity issuance expands the shareholder...