Party activists wish to (i) advocate the best policy and yet (ii) unify behind a common party line. An activist`s understanding of his environment is based on the speeches of party leaders. A leader`s influence, measured by the weight placed on her speech, increases with her judgement on policy...

Party activists face a coordination problem: a critical mass (a barrier to coordination) must advocate a single policy alternative if the party is to succeed. The need for direction is the degree to which the merits of the alternatives respond to the underlying mood of the party. An individual`s...

Consistent with the theory of real options, it is argued that the value of the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) in the Indian state of Maharashtra and its impact on workers` behaviour do not depend so much on its income supplementation as on enlargement of opportunities in an uncertain...

I construct a theory of foreign interventions in which the political preferences of the foreign country are determined by its different economic ties with alternative local groups.  Stronger economic ties make a group more influenceable from the outside, and thus more willing to grant economic...

This paper investigates the behaviour of bodies or organizations, operating in a stochastic environment, where there is a delegated decision maker.  A crucial decision is when to delegate to another decision maker.  The problem may be intrapersonal, as occurs when there are endogenously...

We theoretically and empirically examine the relationship between natural resource revenues and financial development.  In the theoretical part, we present a politico-economic model in which contract enforcement is low and decreasing in resource revenues when political institutions are poor,...

This paper argues that rural opposition to land reform in transition Russia is a consequence of individually rational decisions by members of former state and collective farms about whether to support further land reform, or preserve the status quo, collective farming. Evidence from survey data...

We model the interplay between a government's performance, its expected lifetime, and the confidence it enjoys. Here, "confidence" can be broadly interpreted as the government's popularity, the size of its parliamentary majority, its reserve of talent, or other factors. Confidence evolves in...

We evaluate the impact of firm-specific export subsidies on exports in Colombia.  Using a two-stage selection correction procedure, we obtain firm-specific predicted subsidy amounts that can be explained by the characteristics that determine the firms' eligibility for government support and its...

Unemployment in the 1930s was low in France by international standards, nevertheless there was a virulent drive to expel immigrant workers as a means of limiting domestic unemployment. This involved not only the repatriation of the foreign chômeur, but also legislation to displace the foreign...