The aim of the New Political Economy is to understand important issues that arise in the policy sphere. <link rid="fn2">-super-1 </link> It is not, as is occasionally hinted, an effort by economists to colonise political science. Rather, the main concern is to extend the competence of economists to analyse issues that...

On 19 December 2014, the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the Bank of England hosted a discussion forum based around Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital in the twenty-first century, with a number of economists from academia, public sector bodies and private sector institutions. Four speakers...

What factors determine the nature of political opportunism in local government in South India? To answer this question, we study two types of policy decisions that have been delegated to local politicians—beneficiary selection for transfer programs and the allocation of within-village public...

One of the most cherished propositions in economics is that market competition by and large raises consumer welfare. But whether political competition has similarly virtuous consequences is far less discussed. This paper formulates a model to explain why political competition may enhance...

The question of who guards the guards is intimately connected with broader questions of state capacity and the establishment of a monopoly of violence in society, something which is often viewed as the defining feature of the modern state. But to establish such a monopoly, civilian rulers need...

This paper analyses Labour's record on monetary policy and the record of the MPC which it created. The paper begins by discussing the conceptual framework and institutions behind inflation targeting as it operates in the UK. We then discuss the successes that it enjoyed up to 2007 and debate the...

There is a great deal of interest in the causes and consequences of conflict in Africa, one of the poorest areas of the world where only modest economic progress has been made. This paper asks whether post-colonial conflict is, at least in part, a legacy of historical conflict by examining the...