This paper investigates the implications of how states with initiative systems of legislation can use this more direct form of democracy to improve productive resource alloction by their governments. We construct a simple growth model whereby we can identify this channel through which...

The World Economic Forum recognizes that while restrictions on energy affect water systems and vise versa, energy and water policy are rarely coordinated. The International Panel on Climate Change predicts that wet places will become wetter and dry places will become dryer. Transboundary water,...

It has been shown that both formal existence and actual use of direct democratic institutions have effects on a number of variables such as fiscal policies, quality of governance but also economic growth. Further, it has been argued that direct democratic institutions do not only impact upon the...

This article discusses the phenomenon of female leadership and the dual roles associated with female leaders in the United States by examining statistics concerning women in leadership roles and coverage of the 2008 Presidential election. It goes on to explore situations when women leaders may...

One of the pillars of every community is its system of government. Many government functions, such as collecting taxes and running elections, involve the collection and dissemination of information. Thus, governments can use information technology (IT) to solve a host of problems. Because IT...

The economic effects of federalism are unclear: some papers find that federalism has strong positive effects on a number of economically relevant variables, others find negative effects. The results often crucially hinge upon the proxies for federalism used. In this paper, we critically survey...

This paper constructs and examines a macroeconomic model which combines features from both real and political business cycle models. Our goal is to augment a standard real business cycle tax model by introducing political leaders who possess heterogeneous preferences for taxation and uncertain...

This paper investigates the empirical implications of optimal taxation models in the presence of political institutions. Conventional economic theory suggests that the optimal rate of taxation is sensitive to the underlying assumptions concerning externalities. If there are no externalities, the...

This paper develops a model to explain why some countries appear to be caught in a poverty-conflict trap whereas others do not. We construct a simple two-period model where consumption and investment decisions are made in the presence of governments who consider initiating diversionary conflict...

Provides the Overview to the Report and reviews each of the chapters in the report. The theme of governance in India in the context of commercialisation of infrastructure is introduced and issues raised by the various papers are linked together to present an agenda for reform