We consider a model of policy choice in which appropriate policies depend on a country’s own circumstances, but the presence of a successful leader generates an informational externality and results in too little ‘policy experimentation’. Corrupt governments are reined in while honest...

This paper develops a theory of policy making, that examines the incentives for experimentation with new policies and the scrappage of adopted policies. We demonstrate that a government which cares about its reputation out of electoral concerns, takes socially ine?cient policy gambles that may...

Governments in many developing countries skew public resources towards urban sectors, despite a majority of citizens residing in rural areas. This paper develops a novel political argument for this urban bias phenomenon in a framework where all voters, rural and urban, have equal voice, but...

Why do economic reforms that are proceeding successfully often run aground? In this paper we show that there might arise circumstances where the initial success of reform might result in it running into a political impasse. We suggest that the key might lie in the e?ect that the reform process...

We examine the role of visibility in influencing government resource allocation across multiple public goods. In an electoral framework, outcomes are defined to be less visible in tasks if it is harder to assess government ability based on observed outcomes. Such a 'visibility effect' distorts...