Are democracies more transparent than other types of political regimes? The answer to this question is often assumed to be yes. The contestability of elections and transparency of policy-making are however, analytically distinct concepts. We investigate theoretically the willingness of...

There are many stories of democracy but little consensus over which variables robustly determine its emergence and survival. We apply extreme bounds analysis to test the robustness of 59 factors proposed in the literature, evaluating over 3 million regressions. The most robust determinants of...

In an autocracy, the ruling elite allocates resources to unproductive contest in order to protect its power. This paper establishes that a flatter income distribution, a slow-growing or shrinking capital stock, and a decrease in the relative size of the workforce increases the likelihood of a...

What are the characteristics of the democratic polity that are relevant to trade policy? This chapter surveys the empirical evidence to address the first question, and presents a simple model of trade and politics to address the second. Democracies are, in general, characterized by divided...

Corruption, resource extraction and waste by policymakers are endemic to any polity, and are often a source of poor economic performance. Voters in democracies can reduce this dissipation by revoking the authority of their elected officials at election times, but only if they have the...