Rainfall is a truly exogeneous variable and hence popular as an instrument for many outcomes. But by its very nature, rainfall in nearby areas tends to be correlated. I show theoretically that if there are also spatial trends in outcomes of interest, this may create spurious correlation. In...

Rain affects electoral turnout both through a direct effect on the cost of voting and by changing the opportunity cost. In a panel of Norwegian municipalities I find that rain on Election Day increases turnout. As turnout affects electoral outcomes, rain provides an exogeneous source of...

This paper studies the joint effect of fractionalization and inequality on the size of government. Within a political economy model of tax determination, I study the effect of voters with a group-based social conscience, so they care more about the well-being of those belonging to their own...

I consider a society with heterogeneous individuals who can form organizations for the production of a differentiated service. An arrangement of organizations is said to be split up stable when there is no majority to split any of the organizations. Unlike other equilibrium concepts in the...

We report results from a dictator game experiment with nurse students and real estate broker students as dictators, and Amnesty International as the recipient. Although brokers contributed substantial amounts, nurses contributed significantly more, on average 76 percent of their endowment. In a...

No voters cast their votes based on perfect information, but better educated and richer voters are on average better informed than others. We develop a model where the voting mistakes resulting from low political knowledge reduce the weight of poor voters, and cause parties to choose political...

We report results from a dictator game experiment with nurse students and real estate broker students as dictators, and Amnesty International as the recipient. Although brokers contributed substantial amounts, nurses contributed significantly more, on average 76 percent of their endowment. In a...

No voters cast their votes based on perfect information, but better educated and richer voters are on average better informed than others. We develop a model where the voting mistakes resulting from low political knowledge reduce the weight of poor voters, and cause parties to choose political...