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Economics versus Politics: Pitfalls of Policy Advice
Acemoglu, Daron; Robinson, James Alan - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2013
The standard approach to policy-making and advice in economics implicitly or explicitly ignores politics and political economy, and maintains that if possible, any market failure should be rapidly removed. This essay explains why this conclusion may be incorrect; because it ignores politics,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010969258
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State Capacity and Economic Development: A Network Approach
Acemoglu, Daron; Robinson, James Alan; García-Jimeno, … - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014
We study the direct and spillover effects of local state capacity using the network of Colombian municipalities. We model the determination of local and national state capacity as a network game in which each municipality, anticipating the choices and spillovers created by other municipalities...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010969364
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Social Norms and the Enforcement of Laws
Acemoglu, Daron; Jackson, Matthew O. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014
We examine the interplay between social norms and the enforcement of laws. Agents choose a behavior (e.g., tax evasion, production of low-quality products, corruption, substance abuse, etc.) and then are randomly matched with another agent. An agent's payoff decreases with the mismatch between...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010885300
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Highway to Hitler
Voth, Hans-Joachim; Voigtlaender, Nico - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014
Can infrastructure investment win "hearts and minds"? We analyze a famous case in the early stages of dictatorship - the building of the motorway network in Nazi Germany. The Autobahn was one of the most important projects of the Hitler government. It was intended to reduce unemployment, and was...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010950692
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Left, Right, Left: Income, Learning and Political Dynamics
Morrow, John; Carter, Michael - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2013
The political left turn in Latin America, which lagged its transition to liberalized market economies by a decade or more, challenges conventional economic explanations of voting behavior. This paper generalizes the forward-looking voter model to a broad range of dynamic, non-concave income...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010950705
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Advancing the Empirical Research on Lobbying
Figueiredo, John M. de; Richter, Brian Kelleher - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2013
This essay identifies the empirical facts about lobbying which are generally agreed upon in the literature. It then discusses challenges to empirical research in lobbying and provides examples of empirical methods that can be employed to overcome these challenges--with an emphasis on statistical...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010950859
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When Ideas Trump Interests: Preferences, World Views, and Policy Innovations
Rodrik, Dani - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2013
The contemporary approach to political economy is built around vested interests - elites, lobbies, and rent-seeking groups which get their way at the expense of the general public. The role of ideas in shaping those interests is typically ignored or downplayed. Yet each of the three components...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010950941
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Can't We All Be More Like Scandinavians? Asymmetric Growth and Institutions in an Interdependent World
Acemoglu, Daron; Robinson, James Alan; Verdier, Thierry A. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012
-style institutions? More generally, in an interdependent world, would we expect all countries to adopt the same institutions? To provide … theoretical answers to this question, we develop a simple model of economic growth in a world in which all countries benefit and … potentially contribute to advances in the world technology frontier. A greater gap of incomes between successful and unsuccessful …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010950944
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A Theory of Minimalist Democracy
Francois, Patrick; Trebbi, Francesco; Bidner, Chris - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014
A majority of the world democracies are far from the benchmark of representative democracy. This paper presents a model …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010951051
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Adam Smith's "Tolerable Administration of Justice" and the Wealth of Nations
Irwin, Douglas A. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014
In the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith argues that a country's national income depends on its labor productivity, which in turn hinges on the division of labor. But why are some countries able to take advantage of the division of labor and become rich, while others fail to do so and remain poor?...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010951078