This paper tests the hypothesis that the extension of the voting franchise was caused by the threat of revolution, as suggested by Acemoglu and Robinson [Quarterly Journal of Economics 115, 1167-1199, 2000]. We approximate the threat of revolution in a given country by revolutionary events...

We study the effect of electoral incentives on the allocation of public services across legislative districts. We develop a model in which elections encourage individual legislators to cater to parochial interests and thus aggravate the common pool problem. Using unique data from seven US...

This paper studies the relationship between corruption and sustainable development in a sample of 110 countries between 1996 and 2007. Sustainability is measured by growth in genuine wealth per capita. The empirical analysis consistently finds that cross-national measures of perceived and...

The secret ballot is one of the cornerstones of democracy. We contend that the historical process of modernization caused the switch from open to secret ballot with the underlying mechanism being that income growth, urbanization, and rising education standards undermined vote markets and made...

The literature on the rational political business cycle suggests that politicians systematically manipulate economic and fiscal conditions before elections to increase their chance of gaining reelection. Most tests of this theory look for evidence of pre- election distortions in fiscal policy....

Many industrialised countries have experienced an increase in environmental awareness and support to green lobby groups in past decades. This paper develops a political-economy model to investigate to what extent a rise of environmentalism, via the induced change in political power structures,...

We evaluate the impact of real business cycle shocks on corruption and economic policy in a model of entry regulation in a representative democracy. We .nd that corruption is procyclical and regulation policy is counter-cyclical. Corrupt politicians engage in excessive stabilization of aggregate...

Many scholarly articles on corruption give the impression that the world is populated by two types of people: the "sanders" and the "greasers". The "sanders" believe that corruption is an obstacle to development, while the "greasers" believe that corruption can (in some cases) foster...

This paper evaluates the extent of regulation in a democracy with political corruption. Elected politicians can restrict entry of firms in exchange for bribes from entrepreneurs. Full liberalisation implies free entry and allocative efficiency and is supported by a majority of voters. Voters...

Rational choice models predict that political competition and political participation have opposite effects on the size of government. We investigate these theories using data from a panel of 18 Latin American countries during the 20th century. Our research builds evidence for the prediction...