The incentives of politicians to provide broad public goods and reduce poverty vary across countries. Even in democracies, politicians often have incentives to divert resources to political rents and private transfers that benefit a few citizens at the expense of many. These distortions can be...

In "Evaluating Recipes for Development Success" Avinash Dixit criticizes recent efforts to identify the "fundamental" causes of development and to distill policy recommendations from these efforts. This comment focuses on the strand of that literature related to institutions and development. Two...