In a federal state with weak political institutions, constituent units might protect their enterprises from enforcement of federal taxes. The effectiveness of such protection depends on the ability of local politicians to extract rents from enterprises. They can do so when local monopolies can...

We posit a rational choice model of dictatorship to explain the tendency of dictators to repress innocent citizens. This model demonstrates that, when the quality of information about regime enemies is low, a rational dictator will knowingly kill and imprison citizens who are not real enemies....