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 paper incorporates competition for fiscal transfers (or, equivalently, rent seeking from state coffers) into a standard general equilibrium model of economic growth and endogenously chosen fiscal policy. The government generates tax revenues, but then each selfinterested individual agent...

Social conflict and slow growth are features of many developing economies. This paper considers the role institutions of property rights and conflict management can play in both achieving prosperity and mitigating conflict in these economies. We study how introducing conflict over economic...

This article reviews the use of the concept of political instability in economic research, the importance of which has been growing in recent years due to its potentially profound economic consequences. The article explores this concept by working through the definitions, dimensions, and methods...

This paper incorporates competition for fiscal transfers (or, equivalently, rent seeking from state coffers) into a standard general equilibrium model of economic growth and endogenously chosen fiscal policy. The government generates tax revenues, but then each selfinterested individual agent...

Are cultural differences good or bad for economic development? Can cultural differences generate conflicts and, therefore, retard economic development? Or can cultural diversity spur creativity and improve economic welfare? These are the type of questions that this chapter addresses. There are...

This paper studies the impact of inequality in capital and land distribution on the pace of industrialization, thereby explaining the role of wealth inequality in the Great Divergence phenomenon. We build a two-sector unified growth model, in which the outcome of public policy contest between...

I propose a new conceptual framework to disentangle the impacts of weather and climate on economic activity and growth: A stochastic frontier model with climate in the production frontier and weather shocks as a source of inefficiency. I test it on a sample of 160 countries over the period...

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...