We provide a theory of political clientelism, which explains sources and determinants of political clientelism, the relationship between clientelism and elite capture, and their respective consequences for allocation of public services, welfare, and empirical measurement of government...

Are politically connected firms more likely to evade taxes? This paper presents evidence suggesting firms owned by President Ben Ali and his family were more prone to evade import tariffs. During Ben Ali?s reign, evasion gaps, defined as the difference between the value of exports to Tunisia...

Professional civil service recruitment is a core component of governance for development, as it is necessary for ensuring the capacity of civil servants, service delivery, fiscal sustainability, and proper salary management. Through an ambitious mixed method approach, this study seeks to provide...

Citizens in developing countries support politicians who provide patronage or clientelist benefits, such as government jobs and gifts at the time of elections. Can access to mass media that broadcasts public interest messages shift citizens' preferences for such benefits? This paper examines the...

This paper examines the relationship between entry regulation and the business interests of former President Ben Ali's family using firm-level data from Tunisia. Connected firms account for a disproportionate share of aggregate employment, output and profits, especially in sectors subject to...

This paper uses unique survey data to provide, for the first time in the literature, direct evidence that vote buying in poor economies is associated with lower provision of public services that disproportionately benefit the poor. Various features of the data and the institutional context allow...

Business and politicians' interaction is pervasive but has mostly been analyzed with a binary approach, i.e. either a firm is connected to a politician or not. Yet the network dimensions of such connections are ubiquitous. This paper uses use a unique data set for seven economies that documents...

It is widely believed that clientelism-the giving of material goods in return for electoral support-is associated with poorer development outcomes. However, systematic cross-country evidence on the deleterious effects of clientelism on development outcomes is lacking. In this paper we examine...

There are sound theoretical reasons to expect clientelism to suppress economic growth: politicians who garner support by offering employment to voters and grassroots party members can do so more effectively when the voters' participation constraint is met with low wages. Hence, clientelism can...

This paper argues that new computer, smartphone, and universal ID technologies are reducing the incentives for political clientelism in the delivery of social programmes in India, especially by allowing party leaders to bypass local brokers to credit-claim for better service delivery and...