This paper investigates whether the religious identity of state legislators in India influences development outcomes, both for citizens of their religious group and for the population as a whole. To control for politician identity to be correlated with constituency level voter preferences or...

We develop a theory of endogenous regimes transitions (with a focus on democratic consolidation), which emphasizes the role of political culture and of its interaction with political institutions. Political culture reflects the extent of individual commitment across citizens to defend democracy...

This essay starts, after a short introduction on the importance and dimensions of “inclusive growth”, with a brief empirical sketch on to what extent Europe has already succeeded with respect to this ambitious goal. The result is quite sobering and gives rise to the question: why is it so?...

Primary education in India is a development question of a unique magnitude, and the delivery of education by Indian states is often suspected to be marred by political haggling and corruption. Using rich administrative school-level panel data across Indian states, we test for electoral cycles in...

There exists a persistent disagreement in the literature over the effect of business cycles on economic growth. This paper offers a solution to this disagreement, suggesting that volatility carries a positive direct effect, but also a negative indirect effect, operating through the insurance...

I discuss the application of capture-recapture methods to estimating the total number of deaths in armed conflicts, and propose an alternative method based on a trivariate discrete choice model. Data come from the 'Truth and Reconciliation Commission' (TRC) of Peru, around 25000 deaths,...

We develop a theory of endogenous political entrenchment in a simple two-party dynamic model of income redistribution with probabilistic voting. A partially self-interested left-wing party may implement (entrenchment) policies reducing the income of its own constituency, the lower class, in...

This paper explores one potentially important channel through which immigration may drive support for extreme right-wing parties: the presence of immigrants in one's neighborhood. We study the case of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). Under the leadership of Jörg Haider, this party increased...

This paper analyzes the effect of a woman's electoral victory on women's subsequent political participation. Using the regression discontinuity afforded by close elections between women and men in India's state elections, we find that a woman winning office leads to a large and significant...

Although the theoretical literature often uses lobbying and corruption synonymously, the empirical literature associates lobbying with the preferred mean for exerting influence in developed countries and corruption with the preferred one in developing countries. This paper challenges these...