In this paper we look at the impact of broad policy reforms on the levels of corruption. We use a structural break approach to identify country-specific time periods in which significant shifts in corruption levels take place. We then correlate these times of change with a set of covariates with...

What prevents majorities from extracting surplus from minorities in legislatures? We study an infinite horizon game where a legislative body votes to determine distributive policy each period. Proposals accepted by a simple majority are implemented, otherwise the status quo allocation prevails....

Most legislatures require the consent of only a simple majority to pass a proposal, so why donʼt legislative outcomes favor only a bare majority? We show that compromise can be achieved if legislators are neither too impatient nor too patient, and initial allocations are “not too unequal”....

Arrangements by which politically connected firms receive economic favors are a common feature around the world, but little is known of the form or effects of influence in business–government relationships. We present a simple model in which influence requires firms to provide goods of...

There has been relatively little investigation of the effect of constitutional transformations on the economic transition in post-communist countries. We develop a simple signalling model in which constitutionalism - a commitment to limit political power and provide judicial defence of basic...

The recent focus on impact evaluation within development economics has lead to increased pressure on aid agencies to provide "hard evidence", i.e. results from randomized controlled trials (RCTs), to motivate how they spend their money. In this paper I argue that even though RCTs can help us...

We argue that the tilt towards donor interests over recipient needs in aid allocation and practices may be particularly strong in new partnerships. Using the natural experiment of Eastern transition we find that commercial and strategic concerns influenced both aid flows and entry in the first...

Dictatorships do not survive by repression alone. Rather, dictatorial rule is often explained as an "authoritarian bargain" by which citizens relinquish political rights for economic security. The applicability of the authoritarian bargain to decision-making in non-democratic states, however,...

As concerns of "reform fatigue" in lower- and middle-income countries have become more widespread, so has the search for ways of boosting support for market-oriented reforms. Although the effects of political institutions on reform results have been extensively analyzed, there has been...

When a government creates an agency to gather information relevant to policymaking, it faces two critical organizational questions: whether the agency should be given authority to decide on policy or merely supply advice, and what should the policy goals of the agency be. Existing literature on...