We study the short-run effect of elections on monetary aggregates in a sample of 85 low and middle income democracies (1975 - 2009). We find an increase in the growth rate of M1 during election months of about one tenth of a standard deviation. A similar effect can neither be detected in...

We provide new evidence on the short-run effect of elections on monetary aggregates. We study month-to-month fluctuations in the growth rate of M1 in a sample of 85 low and middle income democracies from 1975 to 2009. The evidence shows an increase in the growth rate of M1 during election months...

We study the short-run effect of elections on monetary aggregates in a sample of 85 low and middle income democracies (1975-2009). We find an increase in the growth rate of M1 during election months of about one tenth of a standard deviation. A similar effect can neither be detected in...

We provide new evidence on the short-run effect of elections on monetary aggregates. We study month-to-month fluctuations in the growth rate of M1 in a sample of 85 low and middle income democracies from 1975 to 2009. The evidence shows an increase in the growth rate of M1 during election months...

The widening of fiscal deficits during democratic elections is well established. We examine a broader set of fiscal outcomes around elections for a large set of emerging and developing economies (EMDEs), probe for differences between democracies and non-democracies, and estimate the degree to...

We review a decade of literature on clientelism, a central topic in the study of developing democracies. We define clientelism as the discretionary distribution of public resources by politicians. We distinguish clientelism that occurs in the pre-electoral period (electoral clientelism) from...

Rapid urbanization is transforming the developing world, but the political consequences of this transformation are not well understood. In this paper, we argue that political contention and mobilization in the urban environment differs from other forms of political activity in its scale, speed,...

Vote-buying is widely used by parties in developing countries to influence the outcome of elections. We examine the impact of vote-buying on growth. We consider a model with a poverty trap where redistribution can promote growth. We show that vote-buying contributes to the persistence of poverty...