Redistribution is the strategic response of the incumbent to a decrease in its survival probability resulting from weak institutions and growing income inequalities. The purpose of the paper is to test empirically the validity of this conjecture. System and single equation estimations provide a...

Is government size the desirable response to macroeconomic risk, or it is the consequence of distorted political incentives with adverse effects on macroeconomic volatility? This paper reconsiders the mutual interdependence between government size and growth volatility in a large sample of...