It is commonly argued that wage-setting is everywhere becoming less centralized due to changes in production, occupational structure, and economic integration. In this paper we present new data on the extent to which wage-setting institutions have changed since 1950 in countries in the northern...

The eight countries examined in this study-Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden-have long been viewed as exemplifying "corporatist" industrial relations systems, in which union coverage is high, unions are influential and commonly have strong ties to...

This paper analyzes the political determinants of the distribution of infrastructure expenditures by the Italian government to the country’s 92 provinces between 1953 and 1994. Extending implications of theories of legislative behavior to the context of open-list proportional representation,...

We study incumbency advantage and the electoral returns to pork and patronage over ten legislative periods from 1948 to 1992 for two political parties — the Christian Democrats (DC) and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) — in Italy’s lower house of representatives, the Chamber of Deputies....

Economic research on corruption aims both to isolate the economic effects of quid pro quo deals between agents and third parties, and to suggest how legal and institutional reforms might curb harms and enhance benefits. In this comprehensive Handbook, top scholars in the field provide specially...

Utilizing new data on criminal charges against candidates to India's Fourteenth and Fifteenth Lok Sabha elections, we study the conditions that resulted in approximately a quarter of those elected to each legislature facing or having previously faced criminal charges. We show that Indian...

We review a decade of literature on clientelism, a central topic in the study of developing democracies. We define clientelism as the discretionary distribution of public resources by politicians. We distinguish clientelism that occurs in the pre-electoral period (electoral clientelism) from...

Utilizing data from the power corporation of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, we study the politics of electricity theft over a ten year period (2000-09). Our preliminary results are that electricity theft is substantial in magnitude but that the extent of theft varies with the...