This paper examines the reasons why corruption and policy distortions tend to exhibit a high degree of persistence in certain regimes. We identify circumstances under which a firm seeks to evade regulations by (1) bribing of local inspectors and (2) lobbying high-level government politicians to...

We develop and test a theory of the rule of law and environmental policy formation. In our model an increase in the degree of rule of law has two opposing partial effects on environmental policy: first, a greater share of policy decisions are implemented according to law; second, industry...

The literature on trade liberalization and environment has not considered federal structures. This paper shows how the design of environmental policy in a federal system has implications for the effects of trade reform. Trade liberalization leads to a decline in pollution taxes regardless of...

This study establishes a strong association between the country-level female-to-male sex ratio at birth and the time elapsed from a society transitioned to sedentary agricultural activities (the Neolithic Revolution) until 1500AD. This association is robust to the inclusion of various...

This paper studies the effect of former colonies having inherited British common law vs. civil law on the incidence of slum dwelling in developing countries. While common law favors decentralized markets and stronger property rights, civil law yields more government regulation and weaker...

This paper hypothesizes that inherent agricultural land productivity explains contemporary levels of autocracy and democracy. In particular, intermediate levels of productivity are associated with democracy, whereas a legacy of either low or high agricultural productivity is associated with...

Historical evidence indicates that the quest for new territories by the Western European colonizers was driven by a strong incentive to produce sugar, tea, timber, and other commodities. Once arrived, settlers also had a clear interest in becoming self-sufficient in food. This paper establishes...

This paper provides new empirical evidence to the debate on the optimal locus of power over environmental policymaking in developing countries. The authors develop a simple lobby group model with mobile capital. The model predicts that a decentralized institutional structure leads to weaker...