We assembled a large panel of project-level technical and financial data, as well as country-level economic, institutional, and political variables to assess how political competition and policy insulation feasibility determine private participation in financing infrastructure in emerging...

The German energy transition repeatedly faces harsh critiques questioning its economic and environmental merit. This article defends the Energiewende and argues that Germany has chosen a rational and particularly forceful approach to securing sustainable energy supply. Though current...

We present a legislative bargaining model of the provision of a durable public good over an infinite horizion. In each period, there is a societal endowment which can either be invested in the public good or consumed. We characterize the optimal public policy, defined by the time path of...

Can infrastructure investment win "hearts and minds"? We analyze a famous case in the early stages of dictatorship - the building of the motorway network in Nazi Germany. The Autobahn was one of the most important projects of the Hitler government. It was intended to reduce unemployment, and was...

Although decision processes at the EU level are highly complex and often require unanimity, explicit side payments among member states are unknown. However, logrolling and redistributive policies are substitutes. This paper considers the EU regional policy as a substitute for explicit side...

This paper investigates regional or international transfers as a means to prevent immigration into unemployment. We analyze a two-country model with free migration in which the rich country is characterized by minimum wage unemployment. Matching grants for investment in infrastructure are...

This paper adapts the entrepreneurial theory developed by Richard Cantillon, Frank Knight, and Ludwig von Mises to the theory of "political entrepreneurship." Political entrepreneurship is an outgrowth of the theory of the market entrepreneur, and derives from extending entrepreneurial theory...

Can infrastructure investment win “hearts and minds”? We analyze a famous case in the early stages of dictatorship – the building of the motorway network in Nazi Germany. The Autobahn was one of the most important projects of the Hitler government. It was intended to reduce unemployment,...

Although decision processes at the EU level are highly complex and often require unanimity, explicit side payments among member states are unknown. However, logrolling and redistributive policies are substitutes. This paper considers the EU regional policy as a substitute for explicit side...

This paper provides causal evidence on how political parties consolidate power in an electoral democracy. We collect administrative data on expressway construction by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey, and use province-by-year variation in expressway construction to show that...