International carbon markets are frequently propagated as an efficient instrument for reducing CO2 emissions. We argue that such markets, despite their desirable efficiency properties, might not be in the best interest of governments who are guided by strategic considerations in negotiations. We...

Previous studies of policy responses to economic crises argue that crises may lead to more interventionist policy but also cause deregulation. The empirical evidence in previous studies is equally mixed. The present paper argues that whether or not governments implement more or less...

There is scant systematic empirical evidence on what explains variation in academic freedom. Making use of a new indicator and panel data covering 64 countries 1960-2017, we investigate how de facto academic freedom is affected by, in particular, political institutions. We find that moving to...

We present the first comprehensive evidence on the role of cognitive ability and personality traits in the selection of electoral candidates and election of politicians. Using unique data that combine population registers and election statistics from local government elections in Finland with...

Laboratory evidence shows that when people have to argue for a given position, they persuade themselves about the position’s factual and moral superiority. Such self-persuasion limits the potential of communication to resolve conflict and reduce polarization. We test for this phenomenon in a...

Student mock elections are carried out in schools around the world in an effortto increase political interest and efficacy among students. There is, however, alack of research on whether mock elections in schools enhance voter turnoutin real elections. In this paper, we examine whether the...

We ask whether, as many seem to think, corruption worsens, and judicial accountability improves, inequality, and investigate this empirically using data from 145 countries 1960.2014. We relate perceived corruption and de facto judicial accountability to gross-income inequality and consumption...

This paper starts with the observation that almost all military dictatorships that democratize become presidential democracies. I hypothesize that military interests are able to coordinate on status-preserving institutional change prior to democratization and therefore prefer political...