Policy reforms are often multifaceted. In the rent-seeking literature policies are usually taken as one-dimensional. This paper models policy formation using a political contest with endogenous policy proposals containing two dimensions. The two dimensions provide an opportunity to trade off one...

Donor aid organizations (DAOs) are multi-layered and multi-dimensional bureaucracies with many departments trying to find solutions to problems for countries, investing staff resources and effort into having an effect. A department may come into conflict with other departments because of...

Donor aid organizations (DAOs) are multi-layered and multi-dimensional bureaucracies with many departments trying to find solutions to problems for countries, investing staff resources and effort into having an effect. A department may come into conflict with other departments because of...

We model the aid allocation decision where the donor government has announced that good governance is the criterion for receiving aid. Potential recipients must compete for the aid funds. The structure of the competition is important to the donor in terms of achieving good governance, and to the...

This paper investigates the effects of local exposure to refugees on electoral outcomes in the 2016 state election in Germany. Based on quasi-random variation in the allocation of refugees across municipalities and unique data on refugee populations and their type of accommodation, I find that...

This paper studies the effect of female political representation on violence against women. Using a Regression Discontinuity design for close mayoral elections between female and male candidates in Brazil, we find that electing female mayors leads to a reduction in episodes of gender violence....

Industrial policies, such as infrastructure investments and export tariffs, affect the allocation of labor and incomes across sectors, attracting substantial lobbying efforts by special interest groups. Yet, the link between structural change and lobbying remains underexplored. Using more than...

Political economists interested in discerning the effects of election outcomes on the economy have been hampered by the problem that economic outcomes also influence elections. We sidestep these problems by analyzing movements in economic indicators caused by clearly exogenous changes in...

We construct objective measures of privatization, internal and external liberalization reform efforts, across countries over time, and investigate their determinants, reversals and macroeconomic impacts. We find that GDP growth determines external liberalization and privatization, concentration...

We analyze the impact of immigration on voting. Using Italian municipality data and IV estimation strategy, we find that immigration generates a sizable causal increase in votes for the centre-right coalition, which has a political platform less favorable to immigrants. Additional findings are:...