The current landscape of Global History literature appears dominated by a rather asymmetrical dichotomy between Eurocentric analyses of the cumulative emergence of the West and global history which reduces the significance of this transition by blending it into very long-term perspectives. This...

This paper analyzes whether political outcomes in local democracies are determinedby the preferences of the median -typically poor- agents or whether they reflect thewishes of the wealthy elites. A model shows that when politicians belonging to differentgroups can form coalitions, the wealthy...

One of the key goals of political economy is to understand how in-stitutional arrangements shape policy outcomes. This paper studiesa comparatively neglected aspect of this - the forces that shape het-erogeneous performance of autocracies. The paper develops a simpletheoretical model of...