Political constraints and incentives are the true driver of tax reforms. This paper reviews the political economics literature on personal income tax systems and reforms to see how political mechanisms help explain tax reforms. We take some of the implications of these theories to the data using...

Government enterprises are vulnerable to political intervention and influence of various interest groups. The theoretical literature emphasizes the role multiple and conflicting goals that distorts incentives and accountability. We offer empirical evidence of the importance of the political...

We study how the prevailing internal organization of the family affected the initial design of pension systems. Our theoretical framework predicts that, in society with weak family ties, pensions systems were introduced to act as a safety net, while in societies with strong ties they replicate...

This paper empirically examines to what extent political factors explain different performances in income redistribution in countries that vary in terms of size of the public sector, tax systems, political institutions and governance. In line with the theory, we use the difference in the ex ante...