This paper develops a model of the relationship between the age of a dictator and economic growth. In the model a dictator must spread the resources of the economy over his reign but faces mortality and political risk. The model shows that if the time horizon of the dictator decreases, either...

Rational choice models predict that political competition and political participation have opposite effects on the size of government. We investigate these theories using data from a panel of 18 Latin American countries during the 20th century. Our research builds evidence for the prediction...

We study the consequences of the extension of the voting franchise for the size of (central) government and for the tax structure in 10 Western European countries, 1860-1938. We show, .rstly, that the gradual relaxation of income and wealth restrictions on the right to vote contributed to growth...

Many constitutions specify procedures that allow critical decisions to be made with a different rule from day-to-day decisions. We propose a theory of constitutional rules that explains why. The theory is based on the assumption that the type of decision can be observed, but not verified. We...

In a jury decision-making, individuals must compromise in order to reach a group consensus. If individuals compromise for non-rational reasons, such as a preference for conformity or due to erroneous information, then the final decision of the group may be biased. This paper presents original...

This paper provides a rationale for group support for political violence in situations where violence does not provide a material benefit. Rabin’s (1993) theory of fairness is adopted to demonstrate that although group violence may not be the equilibrium of a material game it may be a fairness...

We study the effect of electoral incentives on the allocation of public services across legislative districts. We develop a model in which elections encourage individual legislators to cater to parochial interests and thus aggravate the common pool problem. Using unique data from seven US...

We study Downsian competition in a Mirrleesian model of income taxation. The competing politicians may dier in competence. If politicians engage in vote-share maximization, the less competent politician's policy proposals are attractive to the minority of rich agents, whereas those of the...

This paper studies the relationship between corruption and sustainable development in a sample of 110 countries between 1996 and 2007. Sustainability is measured by growth in genuine wealth per capita. The empirical analysis consistently finds that cross-national measures of perceived and...

We analyze the influence of IMF and World Bank programs on political regime transitions. We develop an extended version of Acemoglu and Robinson's [American Economic Review 91, 2001] model of political transitions to show how the anticipation of new loans from international financial...