Threats of mass revolts could effectively constrain a dictator's public policy if it were not for the collective-action problem. Mass revolts nevertheless happen, but they follow a stochastic pattern. We describe this pattern in a threshold model of collective action and integrate it into an...

We develop a simple model of an insurrection market based on a kleptocratic politico-economic institutional setting, within which a certain government elite holds both all central government position and all productive assets. The kleptocratic setting provokes the appearance of insurrection...

In der ökonomischen Analyse von Transformationsprozessen steht traditionell die Steigerung der Effizienz durch Privatisierung und Wettbewerb im Vordergrund der Betrachtung. Die Erfahrungen aus dem Übergang von Plan- zu Marktwirtschaften in den mittel- und osteuropäischen Reformländern...

In this paper the political economy of revolutions is revisited, as it has been developed and applied in a number of publications by Acemoglu and Robinson. We criticize the fact that these authors abstract from collective-action problems and focus on inequality of income or wealth instead. In...