Globalization radically changes income distribution and triggers intense international tax competition. Therefore, globalization entails an extensive restructuring of the welfare state. We analyze a parsimonious model of an open economy, in its trade and finance transactions with the rest of the...

We study the evolution of market-oriented policies over time and across countries. We consider a model in which own and neighbors' past experiences influence policy choices, through their effect on policymakers' beliefs. We estimate the model using a large panel of countries. We find that there...

Recent theories of the Long Divergence between Middle Eastern and Western European economies focus on Middle Eastern (over-)reliance on religious legitimacy, use of slave soldiers, and persistence of restrictive proscriptions of religious (Islamic) law. These theories take as exogenous the...

What is it about federal governance that makes it so attractive to economists, political philosophers, and legal scholars and is there any evidence that would suggest all this attention is warranted? Proponents see federalism as a means to more efficient public and private economies, as the...

In recent years, comparative economics experienced a revival, with a new focus on comparing capitalist economies. The theme of the new research is that institutions exert a profound influence on economic development. We argue that, to understand capitalist institutions, one needs to understand...

We document that rules for leadership succession in ethnic societies that antedate the modern state predict contemporary political regimes; leadership selection by election in indigenous societies is associated with contemporary representative democracy. The basic association, however, is...

The paper considers issues in recent research on macroeconomic equilibrium in centrally planned economies. I defend the explicit aggregative , macroeconomic approach in theory, institutional relationships and measurement. It has offered a fresh, coherent framework for analysis of many CPE...

We analyze consequences of changing the terms of trade between agriculture and industry on capital accumulation and on welfare of workers in different sectors. The issue was central to Soviet industrialization debate and it remains important in today's developing world. Through a simple general...

This empirical study stresses the underlying macroeconomic forces which determine foreign trade flows in CPEs. The general specification includes a planners' demand equation for the volume of imports, a planners' supply equation for the volume of exports, and a rest-of-world demand equation for...

This paper investigates the institutional causes of China's Great Famine. It presents two empirical findings: 1) in 1959, when the famine began, food production was almost three times more than population subsistence needs; and 2) regions with higher per capita food production that year suffered...