This chapter discusses the law and finance scholarship, from its beginning to its developments into legal research and policymaking. The key issue of the importance of law for finance is illustrated along with the controversy on the law matters proposition. The focus of the chapter, however, is...

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...

When the economic forecasts of public institutions deviate from actual outcomes, the deviations may not only be due to error but also to political intentions. A central bank, for example, may publish over-optimistic growth forecasts at the time of election to facilitate the re-election of the...