The risk of political predation impedes the achievement of economic prosperity. In this paper, we analyze how the risk of predation evolves in different political regimes. Formally, we look at the interaction between a government and citizens in which, in each period, the government has an...

Examining onsets of political instability in countries worldwide from 1955 to 2003, we develop a model that distinguishes countries that experienced instability from those that remained stable with a two-year lead time and over 80% accuracy. Intriguingly, the model uses few variables and a...