type="main" xml:id="obes12054-abs-0001" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>In mature democracies, elections discipline leaders to deliver good economic performance. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, most developing countries also hold elections, but these are often marred by illicit tactics. Using a new global data...</p>

Using global data for the period 1960-99, we model military expenditure. Neighbours' military spending and development aid are important determinants of military expenditure. An implication of the model is that there are regional arms races which are fuelled by aid. Potentially, aid is...

We use micro data on manufacturing employees in Kenya and Tanzania to estimate returns to education and investigate the shape of the earnings function in the period 1993-2001. In Kenya, there have been long-run falls in the returns to education while for Tanzania there is evidence of rising...