We compare voluntary contributions to the financing of a public good in a symmetric setting to those in asymmetric settings, in which four players have different, randomly allocated endowments. We observe that a weak asymmetry in the endowment distribution leads to the same contribution level as...

We show that a large electorate of ignorant voters can succeed in establishing high levels of electoral accountability. In our model an incumbent politician is confronted with a large number of voters who receive very noisy signals about her performance. We find that the accountability problem...

Although formal education is often considered an indicator of political leaders' quality, the evidence on the effectiveness of educated leaders is mixed. Besides, minimum education qualifications are increasingly being used as requirements for contesting elections, making it critical to...

We examine the effects of randomly introduced economic inequality on voluntary cooperation, and whether this relationship is influenced by the quality of local institutions, as proxied by corruption. We use representative data from a large-scale lab-in-the-field public goods experiment with over...

This paper examines the nature and evolution of horizontal and vertical human-capital inequality in South Africa since the end of apartheid. Using census data from 1996, 2001, and 2011, we use different measures of years of schooling to examine the dynamics both across and within racial,...

Unlike much of the growing literature on political clientelism, this short paper contains mainly the author's general reflections on the broad issues of governance (or mis-governance including corruption), democracy, and state capacity that clientelism has an impact on. It then analyses how its...