This paper aims to explain the rise and fall of communism by exploring the interplay between economic incentives and social preferences transmitted by ideology. We introduce inequality-averse and inefficiency-averse agents and analyze their conflict through the interaction between leaders with...

The democratic accountability of policymaking institutions which are autonomous within delegated mandates has not received as much attention as their independence. We analyze in a theoretical model the effects of accountability in the form of possible overriding of economic policy decisions by...