A key issue in political economy concerns the accountability structures put in place to select public officials. While the principle that legislators are to be elected is now a defining feature of modern democracies, there are some offices where a plurality of selection methods survive. A key...

One of the key goals of political economy is to understand how in-stitutional arrangements shape policy outcomes. This paper studiesa comparatively neglected aspect of this - the forces that shape het-erogeneous performance of autocracies. The paper develops a simpletheoretical model of...

Mass media can play a key role in enabling citizens to monitor the actions of incumbents and to use this information in their voting decisions. Thiscan lead to government which is more accountable and responsive to itscitizens’ needs. In spite of the intuitive plausibility of the proposition,...

The determinants of government responsiveness to its citizens is a key issue in politicaleconomy. Here, we develop a model based on the solution of political agency problems.Having a more informed and politically active electorate strengthens incentives for governmentsto be responsive. This...

We discuss political economy mechanisms which can explain the resource curse,in which an increase in the size of resource rents causes a decrease in the economy’stotal value added. We identify a number of channels through which resource rentswill alter the incentives of a political leader....

A central role for economic policy involves reducing the incidence of systemic downturns,when key economic variables experience joint extreme events. In this paper,we empirically analyze such asymmetric dependence using two approaches, correlationsand copulas. We document four findings. First,...

In this essay I review Sylvia Nasar’s long awaited new history of economics, Grand Pursuit. Idescribe how the book is an economic history of the period from 1850-1950, withdistinguished economists’ stories inserted in appropriate places. Nasar’s goal is to show howeconomists work, but also...

The robust empirical finding that exporting firms are systematically different from firms thatmerely serve domestic consumers has inspired the development of a new brand of tradetheory, the theory of heterogeneous firms and trade. The establishment of a canonical modeldue to Melitz (2003) has...