The nineteenth century was a time of substantial changes in the patterns of economic growth and the structure of and allocation of political rights. The concurrence of these changes is not coincidental. We develop a model in which ideological parties representing elites use the allocation of...

This article analyses the dynamics of electoral promises, building on an electoral competition model with endogenous policies. It extends the Grossman-Helpman (1994) model [Grossman G., Helpman E. [1994], Protection for sale, American Economic Review, 84, 4, 833-850] to include sanctions from...

This article analyses the dynamics of electoral promises, building on an electoral competition model with endogenous policies. It extends the Grossman-Helpman (1994) model [Grossman G., Helpman E. [1994], "Protection for sale", American Economic Review, 84, 4, 833-850] to include sanctions from...

Using a unique setting in China, where the geographic distance between Collective firms and local governments is highly persistent due to legal restrictions on land ownership and mobility, we investigate the role of government involvement in small firms. In the analysis of survey responses, we...

I show that lobbying generates negative externalities, which affect non-lobbying companies. When a piece of new legislation passes in Congress, non-lobbying companies in aggregate lose $1.9bn in market value. I obtain this result using a novel dataset combining comprehensive information on...

In this paper, I study how anti-corruption shocks affect Chinese city leaders through political factions or social networks, or more specifically, how sharing college or workplace connections with government officials who have been investigated for corruption affects the city leaders' economic...

We study how political factors can shape competition in the mobile telecommunication sector. We show that the way a government designs the rules of the game has an impact on concentration, competition, and prices. Pro-competition rules reduce prices, but do not hurt the quality of services or...

Using novel data on firms' government relations staff, and two distinct empirical settings, we show that political activism enables firms to grow their market power. The documented increases in profit margins and market share persist for up to two years, and are concentrated among large...

Incumbency advantage is a well known phenomenon in developed countries such as the US. Recent work on Brazil and India has suggested that incumbents are disadvantaged when seeking reelection in developing countries. Most of the research on developing countries has focused on estimating...

Under the historic period when global turbulence and geopolitical events frequently occur, both China and the US desperately need to seek support from various sources outside. One of the strategies is to gain political allegiance through financial aid to Africa. Using 54 African countries who...