This paper extends the savers-spenders theory of Mankiw (2000) to analyze fiscal policy in a small open economy with endogenous labor supply. It is first shown that tax cuts have a short-run contractionary effect on domestic production, and increased public spending has a short-run expansionary...

We aim to explain petro populism —the excessive use of oil revenues to buy political support. To reap the full gains of natural resource income politicians need to remain in office over time. Hence, even a purely rent-seeking incumbent who only cares about his own welfare, will want to provide...

Monetary policy decisions are typically characterized by three features: (i) decisions are made by a committee, (ii) the committee members often disagree, and (iii) the chairman is almost never on the losing side in the vote. We show that the combination of overconfident policymakers and a...

The large variation in revenues among Norwegian local governments can partly be explained by revenues collected from hydropower production. This revenue variation, combined with good data availability, can be used to extend the literature on the re- source curse in two directions. First, to...

Voters often dismantle constitutional checks and balances on the executive. If such checks and balances limit presidential abuses of power and rents, why do voters support their removal? We argue that by reducing politician rents, checks and balances also make it cheaper to bribe or infuence...

Voters often dismantle constitutional checks and balances on the executive. If such checks and balances limit presidential abuses of power and rents, why do voters support their removal? We argue that by reducing politician rents, checks and balances also make it cheaper to bribe or ináuence...

Why do soft budget constraints exist and persist? In this paper we argue that the prevalence of soft budget constraints can be best explained by the political desirability of softness. We develop a political economy model where politicians cannot commit to policies that are not ex post optimal....

The conventional wisdom in political science is that for a democracy to be consolidated, all groups must have a chance to attain power. If they do not then they will subvert democracy and choose to fight for power. In this paper we show that this wisdom is, if not totally incorrect, seriously...

The effects of resource rents on the political equilibrium have been studied in two main types of models. The first tradition employs models of conflict, and studies how resource rents affect the intensity and duration of civil conflict. The second tradition employs political economy models,...

Natural resource abundant countries constitute both growth losers and growth winners, and the main difference between the success cases and the cases of failure lays in the quality of institutions. With grabber friendly institutions more natural resources push aggregate income down, while with...