In a game-theoretic framework, we analyse the circumstances under which self-enforcing redistribution and power-sharing coalitions can be used to peacefully resolve ethnic conflict. The existence of a pacific equilibrium depends crucially on ethnic diversity (the number of ethnic groups). The...

We present a growth model where agents divide time between rent seeking in the form of resource competition; and working in a human capital sector, interpreted as trade or manufacturing. Rent seeking exerts negative externalities on the productivity of human capital, generating multiple steady...

We analyse voter turnout as a function of referendum types. An advisory referendum produces advice that a legislature may or may not take into account when choosing between two alternatives, whereas a binding referendum generates a decisive decision. In theory, voter turnout should be higher...

The capacity of the transmission network determines the extent of integration of a multinational energy market. Cross-border externalities render coordination of network maintenance and investments across countries valuable. Is it then optimal to collect powers in the hands of a single...

This paper analyses simultaneous regulation of cost and quality when firms have private, correlated information about productivity and the regulator receives a signal about quality. It is shown that managerial effort and expenditures on quality are positively correlated in the optimal contract....

We model demographic and economic long-run development in a setting where mortality is endogenous and subject to epidemic shocks. The model replicates the full transition from Malthusian stagnation to modern growth. Consistent with the historical facts, the economy also passes an intermediate...

We present a growth model where agents divide time between rent seeking in the form of resource competition and working in a human capital sector. The latter is interpreted as trade or manufacturing. Rent seeking exerts negative externalities on the productivity of human capital. Adding shocks,...

rates in 18th- and 19th-century Sweden with a seven-grade scale over harvest outcomes in the county where the parish was located. We …find a Malthusian pattern: a good harvest one year leads to lower death rates, and higher birth and marriage rates, in particular the following year; for death...

It may thus serve a ruler’s reproductive interests to be subject to an institution which limits the number of wives he (or anyone who successfully ousts him) can take. Moreover, our model suggests how such marriage norms can arise endogenously in the course of economic development, as an...

The institution of slavery is found mostly at intermediate stages of agricultural development and less often among hunter-gatherers and advanced agrarian societies. We explain this pattern in a growth model with land and labour as inputs in production and an endogenously determined property...