In this paper, I document three stylized facts on leaders, institutions, and re-election incentives, using cross-country data: (1) in democracies, the positive relationship between leaders' performance and their capability is significantly less pronounced in their last term, when they do not...

We study the economic structure of the life of Harry Potter and his co-actors as an economic model that governs the social organization of their economic activities. Our goal is to study and understand the internal consistency of the Potterian economic model and explore the relationships between...

In this paper we explore current understandings of the influence of political rights, among historical legacies, on economic development. We construct variables for selected political regimes for 1811-2010. We find significant association between individual rights and economic growth. We argue...

In this paper we tested the hypothesis of the "political" basis for the "economic" rights. We constructed our own variables of political regimes' classification for years 1820-2000. We found significant positive interdependencies between the Democracy's indicators and Economic Growth. Protection...

Using objective measures of business regulation in 135 countries, we establish that countries with better regulations grow faster. Improving from the worst quartile of business regulations to the best implies a 2.3 percentage points increase in annual growth

Strong financial markets are widely thought to propel economic development, with many in finance seeing legal tradition as fundamental to protecting investors sufficiently for finance to flourish. Kenneth Dam, in the Law-Growth Nexus, finds that the legal tradition view inaccurately portrays how...

I reexamine Hirschman's classic text Exit, Voice, and Loyalty through a game-theoretic interpretation of the relationship between exit and voice. The model, which is general and applicable to diverse environments, treats exit as a costly decision which may be prevented through an appropriate...

This paper discusses and proposes random selection as a component in decision-making in society. Random procedures have played a significant role in history, especially in classical Greece and the medieval city-states of Italy. We examine the important positive features of decisions by random...

We use data on credit in Turkey to document a strong political lending cycle. State-owned banks systematically adjust their lending around local elections compared with private banks in the same province. There is considerable tactical redistribution: state-owned banks increase credit in...

We use data on the universe of credit in Turkey to document a strong political lending cycle. State-owned banks systematically adjust their lending around local elections compared with private banks in the same province. There is considerable tactical redistribution: state-owned banks increase...