Existing empirical studies on the relation between inequality and growth have been criticized for their focus on income inequality and their use of cross-country data sets. Schipper and Hoogeveen use two sets of small area welfare estimates-often referred to as poverty maps-to estimate a model...

What explains the observed incumbency effects in emerging democracies? Unlike their counterparts in advanced democracies, legislative incumbents in emerging democracies are disadvantaged. Existing research attributes this to “endemic voter discontent,” arguing that the preponderance of venal...

Do institutions constrain presidential power in Africa? Conventional wisdom holds that personalist rule grants African presidents unchecked powers. Consequently, very little research exists on African institutions and their impact on executive authority. In this paper, I use original data on the...

This paper provides evidence on how the provision of social infrastructure, such as reliable electricity, can be leveraged to increase taxation in developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. First, using comprehensive data from the latest round of the Afrobarometer survey, the...

Existing research finds significant partisan differences in public opinion on the causes of poverty, deservingness of government assistance, and support for government spending on social protection. However, much of the evidence comes from middle-to-high-income countries with established social...

"A large and growing literature links high levels of ethnic diversity to low levels of public goods provision. Yet while the empirical connection between ethnic heterogeneity and the underprovision of public goods is widely accepted, there is little consensus on the specific mechanisms through...