The paper models the incentives for a self-interested government to implement ""good policies"". While good policies lead to investment and growth, they reduce the government''s ability to increase supporters'' consumption. The model predicts that resource abundance is conductive to poor...

The paper models the incentives for a self-interested government to implement good policies. While good policies lead to investment and growth, they reduce the government's ability to increase supporters' consumption. The model predicts that resource abundance is conductive to poor policies and,...

We empirically investigate the role of civic capital (proxied by voter turnout) in Italy's economic development in the second half of the Twentieth century. Using a unique dataset at the city level, we show that over a fifty-year span voter turnout was steadily correlated with economic...

We produce predictions of Norwegian GDP. To this end, we estimate a Bayesian Dynamic Factor model on a panel of 14 variables (all followed closely by market operators) ranging from 1990 to 2011. By means of a pseudo real-time exercise we show that the Bayesian Dynamic Factor Model performs well...