Why is there significant variation in rent extraction among high-income democracies? A large number of political economy investigations into this research question have found that a long period of democratic rule and high per capita income are associated with less rent extraction among public...

European Enlightenment thinkers were right in stressing the political dimension of inequality, rather than referring to "natural differences" as some others did after them in the 19th or 20th centuries. Drawing from recent theoretical and empirical contributions in social sciences and in...

A vast recent literature has stressed social fragmentation's negative impact on the provision of public goods. It has been established theoretically that social fragmentation engenders discord and thereby undermines public goods provision. Empirical research has produced mixed results about this...

This study describes the main actors (formal and informal) involved in the budget-making process in Ecuador, and presents evidence regarding the main political and economic determinants of fiscal performance. It also discusses whether different political and institutional arrangements governing...

Wasem examines the impacts and implications of the Employment Act of 1946 and discusses how provisions of the Act might be useful for today's policymakers.

Mineral wealth tends to make countries less democratic and more likely to experience a civil war. Many countries also find it hard to use their natural resource revenues to make high-quality, growth-enhancing investments. I argue that these problems are caused, in part, by the unusual qualities...

We investigate the effect of electoral rules and forms of government on public policy outcomes using a new dataset on agriculture and food policies from 74 countries over the 1960–2005 period. Using both cross-sectional and panel data analyses we find robust evidence that the specific nature...

There is a growing interest in the debate on aid effectiveness for assessing the impact of aid not only on economic growth and poverty reduction, but also on intermediate outcomes such as health and education. This paper reviews evidence from recent in-de

Initial analyses of financial globalization argued that increasing interdependence severely curtailed state authority and policy autonomy. While subsequent research countered such claims, the foreign exchange market, which underpins all cross-border transactions, continued to be characterized...