This book provides a synthesis of the theoretical literature of the last ten years with some empirical applications. Social learning is about individuals learning from the behavior of others and may lead to outcomes such as herding, fads, frenzies, crashes, and booms

Where does the money come from to buy votes? We argue that an important source of funds for vote-buying comes from 'contract clientelism', or the provision of public contracts to private firms in exchange for campaign donations. Using quantitative data on Colombian infrastructure contracts, we...