arise when monitoring corruption is difficult relative to monitoring the provision of public services, and politically …-important groups of citizens do not bear the full cost of corruption. The existence of such systems can distort the effective incidence … of the tax burden, reduce the incentives of government to fight corruption, and legitimize bribe-taking …

. In a large electorate, the numerical advantage of the majority becomes irrelevant: democracy is undone by the market …

puzzle in standard economic models. To study this phenomenon, we propose a positive theory of IEAs in which the political … (might not be implemented in full). The theory also provides a new perspective for understanding investments in green …

theory, could be corrected by government intervention. However, as long as government policy is determined by voting …

derives additional utility from being part of the government (e.g., corruption or rents from holding office). We characterize …. Perfect democracy, where current members of the government do not have an incumbency advantage or special powers, always leads … to the emergence of the most competent government. However, any deviation from perfect democracy destroys this result …