This paper argues that high political competition does not necessarily induce policy makers to perform better as previous research has shown. We develop a political economy model and we show that when political competition is tight, and elected politicians can rely on more tax instruments, they...

Immigration has increasingly taken centre-stage in the political landscape. Part of this has been rise in far-right, anti-immigration parties in a range of countries. Existing evidence suggests that the presence of immigrants has a substantial effect on the political views of the electorate,...

There has been a resurgence in right wing and populist politics in recent years. A common element is a focus on immigration, an increase in anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the vilification of minorities. This in turn has the potential to lead to increases in societal hostility towards immigrants....

In a pre-registered experiment involving 1,547 subjects across three Italian cities we exploit regional variation in background, language and diet to investigate the relationship between cultural identity, trust and cooperation. Subjects with relatives (especially maternal grandmothers) who...

This paper provides a simple political agency model to explain the effect of political alignment between different tiers of government on intergovernmental grants and election outcomes. Key features of the model are: (i) rational voters interpret public good provision as a signal of incumbent...