We study a dynamic general equilibrium model where innovation takes the form of the introduction new goods, whose production requires skilled workers. Innovation is followed by a costly process of standardization, whereby these new goods are adapted to be produced using unskilled labor. Our...

A notable feature of post-World War II civil wars is their very long average duration. We provide a theory of the persistence of civil wars. The civilian government can successfully defeat rebellious factions only by creating a relatively strong army. In weakly-institutionalized polities this...

The majority of labor transactions throughout much of history and a significant fraction of such transactions in many developing countries today are "coercive", in the sense that force or the threat of force plays a central role in convincing workers to accept employment or its terms. We propose...

We study (constrained) Pareto efficient allocations in a dynamic production economy where the group that holds political power decides the allocation of resources. For high discount factors, the economy converges to a first-best allocation where labor supply decisions are not distorted. For low...

We study dynamic selection of governments under different political institutions, with a special focus on institutional "flexibility." A government consists of a subset of the individuals in the society. The competence level of the government in office determines collective utilities (e.g., by...