We study how electoral systems affect the presence of women in politics using a model in which both voters and parties might have a gender bias. We apply the model to Spanish municipal elections, in which national law mandates that municipalities follow one of two different electoral systems: a...

We study the determinants of capital intensity and technology content of foreign direct investment, an important economic driving force for developing countries. For this purpose, we use sectoral industry data on U.S. foreign investment abroad, and data on host countries' institutional...

This paper uses provincial-level data for Argentina to test for the causal relationship between electricity distribution and health. It examines the impact of privatization on two output measures: incidence of low birth weight and child mortality rates caused by food poisoning. Privatization...

We analyze the short and long run effects of demographic ageing - increased longevity and reduced fertility - on per-capita growth. The OLG model captures direct effects, working through adjustments in the savings rate, labor supply, and capital deepening, and indirect effects, working through...

We extend 'economic equivalence' results, like the Ricardian equivalence proposition, to the political sphere where policy is chosen sequentially. We derive conditions under which a policy regime (summarizing admissible policy choices in every period) and a state are 'politico-economically...

This paper analyzes the sustainability of intergenerational transfers in politico-economic equilibrium. Embedding electoral competition for the votes of old and young households in the standard Diamond (1965) OLG model, we find that intergenerational transfers naturally arise in a Markov perfect...