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When is Democracy an Equilibrium?: Theory and Evidence from Colombia's "La Violencia"

Robinson, James Alan; Torvik, Ragnar; Chacon, Mario - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2006

The conventional wisdom in political science is that for a democracy to be consolidated, all groups must have a chance … to attain power. If they do not then they will subvert democracy and choose to fight for power. In this paper we show … natural model, we show that democracy may never be consolidated in such a situation. Rather, democracy may only be stable when …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005710353

Interests, Institutions, and Ideology in the Republican Conversion to Trade Liberalization, 1934-1945

Irwin, Douglas A.; Kroszner, Randall S. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 1997

This paper investigates the factors explaining significant policy change by studying how bipartisan support developed to sustain the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA) of 1934. The RTAA fundamentally transformed both the process and outcome of U.S. trade policy: Congress delegated its...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005710429

The Political Economy of Declining Industries: Senescent Industry Collapse Revisited

Verdier, Thierry A.; Brainard, S. Lael - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 1993

One of the most robust empirical regularities in the political economy of trade is the persistence of protection. This paper explains persistent protection in terms of the interaction between industry adjustment, lobbying, and the political response. Faced with a trade shock, owners of...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005710541

Direct Democracy and Local Public Goods: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia

Olken, Benjamin - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2008

This paper presents an experiment where 48 Indonesian villages were randomly assigned to choose development projects through either representative-based meetings or direct election-based plebiscites. Plebiscites resulted in dramatically higher satisfaction among villagers, increased knowledge...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005710639

Import Peneteration and the Politics of Trade Protection

Maggi, Giovanni; Rodriguez-Clare, Andres - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 1998

In this paper we reconsider a key empirical prediction generated by an important class of political-economy models of trade policy, namely that trade protection should be higher in sectors characterized by lower import penetration (we call this the little support for this prediction. In this...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005710663

The Curley Effect

Glaeser, Edward Ludwig; Shleifer, Andrei - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2002

James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. Boston as a consequence stagnated, but Curley kept winning...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005710665

Social Mobility and the Demand for Redistribution: The POUM Hypothesis

Benabou, Roland; Ok, Efe A. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 1998

Even relatively poor people oppose high rates of redistribution because of the anticipation that they or their children may move up the income ladder. This hypothesis commonly advanced as an explanation of why most democracies do not engage in large-scale expropriation and highly progressive...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005710716

Congressional Distributive Politics and State Economic Performance

Levitt, Steven; Poterba, James - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 1994

This paper tests several theories of the effects of congressional representation on state economic growth. States that were represented by very senior Democratic congressmen grew more quickly during the 1953-1990 period than states that were represented by more junior congressional delegations....

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005710795

The Political Economy of the U.S. Mortgage Default Crisis

Mian, Atif; Sufi, Amir; Trebbi, Francesco - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2008

We examine the determinants of congressional voting behavior on two of the most significant pieces of federal legislation in U.S. economic history: the American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. We find evidence that...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005710885

Electoral Competition and Special Interest Politics

Grossman, Gene; Helpman, Elhanan - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 1994

We study the competition between two political parties for seats in a parliament. The parliament will set two types of policies: ideological and non-ideological. The parties have fixed positions on the ideological issues, but choose their non-ideological platforms to attract voters and campaign...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005714256