Railroad access can accelerate the technological progress in the industrial sector and therefore induce structural change and urbanization, the two common features of modern economic growth. I examine this particular mechanism in the context of Japanese railroad network expansion and modern...

Railroad access can accelerate the technological progress in the industrial sector and therefore induce structural change and urbanization, the two common features of modern economic growth. I examine this particular mechanism in the context of Japanese railroad network expansion and modern...

Whether longer tenure of political agents leads to better public policies is a central question of political economy. Tenure security extends the time horizons of dictators, and this property may be important for understanding economic growth under extractive institutions. This study estimates...

Railroad access may accelerate technological progress in the industrial sector and induce structural change and urbanization - the two common features of modern economic development. By digitizing novel datasets of factories and railroad networks in late 19th- and early 20th-century Japan and...

Elected politicians may engage in opportunistic behavior for private benefits, which is a central problem in democratic societies. While re-election incentives can mitigate this problem, they may also induce words without actions: politicians pander to voters right before elections by proposing...

Public goods provision in developing countries can affect tax morale by increasing the perceived benefits of paying tax (the fiscal exchange channel) or increasing communication within communities (the social image channel or conformity channel). We study this nexus using a case of an...