A utilitarian measure of economic growth combines changes in the distribution of income with changes in real income per person to show how much better off people are becoming over time. It is the rate of growth of the dollar value of average utility of income. As such , it is seen differently by...

Vote-buying is widely used by parties in developing countries to influence the outcome of elections. We examine the impact of vote-buying on growth. We consider a model with a poverty trap where redistribution can promote growth. We show that vote-buying contributes to the persistence of poverty...

In this paper we try to explain why the misallocation of resources across different productive sectors tends to persist over time. We document that there is a link between the distribution of the public expenditure across sectors and the sectoral composition of an economy. We propose a general...

In this paper we study why the misallocation of resources across different productive sectors tends to persist over time. To this end we propose a general equilibrium model that delivers two structural relations. On the one hand, the public expenditure distribution influences the future sectoral...