This paper uses a large cross-country survey of business firms to assess their influence on government policies. When controlling for endogeneity, we find that such an influence is associated with larger firms and to a lesser extent with government ownership, but not with the degree of...

In rent seeking contests agents compete over a given amount of resource a prize. To increase the likelihood of winning the prize, the agents expend efforts. This paper addresses the issue of entry to and entry deterrence from rent seeking contest. The main purpose of the analysis is to provide...

Despite the lack of legal channels through which binding commitments can be made by the government, economic and political factors enable it to affect future outcomes. In practice, large transaction costs are associated with any significant change of policy, and therefore the current government...

The aim of this paper is to provide comprehensive empirical evidence on recent theories that link democracy and income inequality for the period 1960-1997. In simple cross-country regressions I find a non-monotonic link between democracy and inequality when using ordinary least squares,...

This paper explores the link between compulsory voting and income distribution using a cross-section of countries around the world. Our empirical cross-country analysis for 91 countries during the period 1960-2000 shows that when compulsory voting can be strongly enforced the distribution of...