This paper is about cronyism, or the arrangements by which influential firms receive economic favors. This phenomenon has been documented in numerous case studies, but rarely formalized or analyzed quantitatively. We offer a formal voting model in which cronyism is modeled as a contract where...

Dictatorships do not survive by repression alone. Rather, dictatorial rule is often explained as an authoritarian bargain by which citizens relinquish political rights for economic security. The applicability of the authoritarian bargain to decision-making in non-democratic states, however, has...