Principal-agent problems can arise when preferences of voters are not aligned with preferences of political representatives. Often the consequence of the political principal-agent problem is political catering to special interests. In this paper I provide examples of principal-agent problems...

We apply the difference-in-discontinuities design to disentangle the fiscal effects of the governance system conditional on electoral systems. We take advantage of a natural experiment, which involves two institutional reforms at the local level in Poland. The first reform introduced two...

A relatively simple frequency-type testing procedure for unit root potentially contaminated by an additive stationary noise is introduced, which encompasses general settings and allows for linear trends. The proposed test for unit root versus stationarity is based on a finite number of...

This paper considers a class of GMM estimators for general dynamic panel models, allowing for cross sectional dependence due to spatial lags and due to unspecified common shocks. We significantly expand the scope of the existing literature by allowing for endogenous spatial weight matrices,...

In this paper, we investigate the use of interactive effect or linear factor models in regional policy evaluation. We contrast treatment effect estimates obtained by Bai (2009)'s least squares method with the popular difference in differences estimates as well as with estimates obtained using...

In this paper we use a transparent statistical methodology – synthetic control methods – to implement data-driven comparative studies about the impact of autocratic transition on real per capita GDP. The applied methodology compares the growth of countries that experienced a transition to...

Involuntary job loss in administrative data is commonly identified by focusing on mass-layoffs or plant closures. However, such events usually do not happen without prior knowledge, which potentially leads to selection in the labor turnover of distressed firms. We find that workers separating...