Government responses to banking crises are less likely to favor special interest groups when elections are near, voters are better informed about the costs of inefficient government decisions, and governments have multiple veto players.Keefer investigates the political determinants of government...

One strand of research argues that polarized societies find it difficult to reach political consensus on appropriate responses to crises. Another strand focuses on redistribution, asking whether income inequality stifles growth by increasing political incentives to redistribute. Which is...

Some say that democracy is more likely to survive under parliamentary governments. That result is not robust to the use of different variables from the Database of Political Institutions, a large new cross-country database that may illuminate many other issues affecting and affected by political...

Keefer reviews progress made in understanding the effects of different dimensions of governance on economic development, and the sources of quot;good governance.quot; The term governance has been used to embrace concepts that are heterogeneous both with respect to their effects on economic...

Keefer reviews how three pillars of political economy - collective action, institutions, and political market imperfections - help us answer the question: Why do some countries develop and others do not? Each makes tremendous advances in our understanding of who wins and who loses in government...

This paper develops and tests a model of the effect of political checks and balances on the incentives of elected veto players to cater to special interests. A larger number of veto players reduces political incentives to make deals with special interests, but the effect is declining in the...

This paper reviews the unintended consequences of the war on drugs, particularly for developing countries, and weighs them against the evidence regarding the efficacy of prohibition to curb drug use and trade. It reviews the available evidence and presents new results that indicate that...

This paper suggests a new factor that makes civil war more likely: the inability of political actors to make credible promises to broad segments of society. Lacking this ability, both elected and unelected governments pursue public policies that leave citizens less well-off and more prone to...

The existing literature emphasizes and contrasts the role of political checks and balances and legal origin in determining the pace of financial sector development. This paper expands substantially on one aspect of this debate: the fact that government actions that promote financial sector...

Countries vary systematically with respect to the incentives of politicians to provide broad public goods and to reduce poverty. Even in developing countries that are democracies, politicians often have incentives to divert resources to political rents and to private transfers that benefit a few...