The role of foreign aid in the growth process of developing countries has been a topic of intense debate. Foreign aid is an important topic given its implications for poverty reduction in developing countries.Since the second World War, foreign aid has been one of the most prominent policy tools...

This paper studies the effects of asymmetries in re-election probabilities across parties on public policy and its subsequent propagation to the economy. The struggle between opposing groups – that disagree on the composition of public consumption – results in governments being endogenously...

This paper studies the effects of asymmetries in re-election probabilities across parties on public policy and their subsequent propagation to the economy. The struggle between groups that disagree on targeted public spending (e.g., pork) results in governments being endogenously short-sighted:...

We study the determinants of voting outcomes on the provision of public consumption through marginal income taxes in the context of the simple linear growth model. We provide analytical results on how the dynamic politicoeconomic equilibrium maps the economic fundamentals to policies and...

We study the politico-economic equilibrium of a parametric version of the neoclassical growth model, uncovering the link between economic fundamentals, and (i) the level of government, and also (ii) the composition of government spending between public consumption and public infrastructure....

We explore a political economy model of labor subsidies, extending Meltzer and Richard's median voter model to a dynamic setting. We explore only one source of heterogeneity: initial wealth. As a consequence, given an operative wealth effect, poorer agents work harder, and if the agent with...

Liquidity may be a serious challenge to growing nations especially in the absence of foreign aid or other necessary assistance like access to borrowing. This paper introduces the Invisible Reserves Theory which states that, “A country that is locked in a depression during the absence of...

We study the determinants of voting outcomes on the provision of public consumption through marginal income taxes in the context of the simple linear growth model. We focus on how the dynamic politicoeconomic equilibrium maps the economic fundamentals to policies and long-run growth. We find...

Several authors have argued that inequality hinders growth by leading to high distorting taxes and transfers. We retest whether inequality and transfers are positively linked, using several alternative definitions and data sets including new income data assembled by the World Bank. We correct an...

The analysis provides a new explanation for two widespread problems concerning European unemployment policy: the disappointingly small effect of many past reform measures on unemployment, and the political difficulties in implementing more extensive reform programs. We argue that the heart of...