This paper provides new empirical evidence on policy-makers' voting patterns on interest rates. Applying (pooled) Taylor-type rules and using real-time information available from published inflation reports and voting records, the paper tests for heterogeneity among committee members in three...

Although the application of the conceptual and analytical framework of economics to the study of populism is still in its infancy, great advances have been made in recent years. This paper reviews some key contributions behind this progress. When analyzing populism, economists face two...

We investigate the geographical concentration of representatives and the distribution of fiscal transfers both theoretically and empirically. We develop a model which predicts that funds to an area are positively correlated with the number of representatives residing in that area. Our empirical...

When does organized crime resort to assassinating politicians? In narcocracies, criminal groups co-opt political elites through bribery in exchange for protection to traffic illegal drugs. When criminal groups compete, they may also resort to political violence to influence which candidate wins...

We study the role of an enforcer in the effectiveness of selective incentives in solving the collective action problem when groups take part in a contest. Cost functions exhibit constant elasticity of marginal effort costs. If prize valuations are homogeneous, our source of heterogeneity induces...

In an interconnected world, economic and political interests inevitably reach beyond national borders. Since policy choices generate external economic and political costs, foreign state and non-state actors have an interest in inflencing policy actions in other sovereign countries to their...

In this chapter, we review the recent literature on conflict and appropriation. Allowing for the possibility of conflict, which amounts to recognizing the possibility that property rights are not perfectly and costlessly enforced, represents a significant departure from the traditional paradigm...

The present paper is part of unpublished book divided into three interrelated manuscripts that analyze the collapse of the Sudan. The theory introduced here is that the regime was built on kleptocratic framework. That enhanced a rapid transformation of the values' system of the country and...