Regressions and tests performed on data from Transparency International Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) 2004 survey show that personal or household experience of bribery is not a good predictor of perceptions held about corruption among the general population. In contrast, perceptions about...

Over the past quarter century, an unprecedented and often unanticipated wave of democratization has spread over large parts of the world. While some skepticism is reasonable regarding both the level and durability of many of the new experiments of democratization, the direction and scope of...

Support for economic reforms has often shown puzzling dynamics: there are many examples of reforms that started off successfully but nevertheless lost public support, and vice versa. We show that learning dynamics can rationalize this apparent paradox, the reason being that the process of...

This paper studies how media and democracy influence government action taken before and after a natural disaster. The key elements in this relationship are the media's role as the provider of information to voters about government action and the quality of democracy that pertains to how relevant...

In the information age an exchange with the media is part of the duties the economics profession has to deliver to educate the public and to ensure its position in society. A key issue is the education of policymakers through the media. It is the silver bullet of policy advice in comparison to...

This paper examines the causal link between education and democracy. Motivated by a model whereby educated individuals are in a better position to assess the effects of public policies and hence favor democracy where their opinions matter, the empirical analysis uses World Values Surveys to...