In immature democracies, businessmen run for public office to gain direct control over policy, whereas in mature democracies they typically rely on other means of influence. We develop a simple model to show that businessmen run for office only when two conditions hold. First, as in many...

Politicians care about tax revenues in part because they pay for transfers or public goods which are important to voters, and which are therefore important for the politician’s reelection. When economic sectors differ in their taxability, i.e. the degree to which tax revenues can be extracted...

When governments care about tax revenues, the taxability of different forms of economic activity will influence the decisions of governments about what activity to support. If factors of production are mobile across sectors which differ in their taxability, political economies will organize...

Much theory of the state assumes a contractual relationship between state and society, where the former provides services valued by the latter, typically in return for revenues. However, as emphasized by many scholars, various transaction costs endemic to state-society relations may prevent the...

The last decade has witnessed growing interest among political scientists and economists in nondemocratic politics. This trend has been reflected in increasingly rigorous game-theoretic modeling of its various aspects: regime persistence and breakdown; ruling-coalition formation and leadership...

We present a formal model of government control of the media to illuminate variation in media freedom across countries and over time. Media bias is greater and state ownership of the media more likely when the government has a particular interest in mobilizing citizens to take actions that...