Today’s developing nations emerged from the rubble of the Second World War. Only a handful of these countries have subsequently attained a level of prosperity and security comparable to that of the advanced industrial world. The implication is clear: those who study the developing world in...

In interpreting these results, we can make use of several characteristics of the economies of the developing nations. The first is that consumers in poor nations spend a very large portion of their incomes on food — in many cases, in excess of 50 to 60 percent. The second is that...

The risk of political predation impedes the achievement of economic prosperity. In this paper, we analyze how the risk of predation evolves in different political regimes. Formally, we look at the interaction between a government and citizens in which, in each period, the government has an...

Examining onsets of political instability in countries worldwide from 1955 to 2003, we develop a model that distinguishes countries that experienced instability from those that remained stable with a two-year lead time and over 80% accuracy. Intriguingly, the model uses few variables and a...

Przeworski, Alvarez, Cheibub, and Limongi (2000) challenge the key hypothesis in modernization theory: political regimes do not transition to democracy as per capita incomes rise, they argue. Rather, democratic transitions occur randomly, but once there, countries with higher levels of GDP per...

Economic growth occurs as resources are reallocated from the traditional sector to the more productive modern sector. Yet, the latter is more vulnerable to political predation. Hence, political risk hinders development. We analyze a politico-economic game between citizens and governments, whose...