Political leaders often have private incentives to pursue expensive and socially wasteful "white elephant" projects. Our argument highlights that weak accountability mechanisms allow autocratic leaders to more easily realize such projects, whereas democratic leaders are more constrained from...

We investigate the adoption and characteristics of social welfare policies in autocracies. If one considers social policies merely as a tool for progressive redistribution to those in need, one might not expect autocratic regimes to spend resources on them. Empirically, however, several...