Senior officials in the ministerial bureaucracy are responsible for the coordination of public service activity and their number has grown enormously since World War II. We study the growth in employment of this politically sensitive high-profile occupational group from a political economics...

We study the harmonization of the base remuneration for the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) who were previously paid like national parliamentarians implying large differences between the delegations from the 27 member countries. Based on detailed information on individual MEPs between...

Traditional political economy has paid primary attention to the structuring of the principal-agent relationship between citizens and politicians and the role of competition and institutions in disciplining political agents. However, as the electoral control of politicians and the credibility of...

This study assesses the relationship between tribalism (the tribalism index) and government effectiveness (per the World Bank) in 65 countries using cross-sectional data averages from 2000-2010. This study finds that countries with high-tribal populations generally enjoy bad governance in terms...

The purpose of this study is to assess the nexus between intelligence (or human capital) and statistical capacity in developing countries. The line of inquiry is motivated essentially by: (i) the scarce literature devoted to elucidating poor statistics in developing countries and (ii) an...

This paper focuses on how corruption affects an important internationalization behavior of firms: the extent of control - wholly owned subsidiary or equity participation - exercised by firms involved in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Recently, scholars have recommended studying the...

This paper analyzes the relationship between gender and corruption, controlling for country-specific heterogeneity in a panel framework. Using annual observations in a pooled setting (no country-fixed effects) confirms the positive link between the involvement of women in society and the absence...

This study aims to provide a neo-institutional explanation of why South Korea increasingly intends to share its developmental experience with the rest of the world. South Korea's knowledge sharing projects are the leading example of expansionary and self-defining efforts of its aid...

This paper exploits five waves of the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) to investigate issues of social and political capital in rural Viet Nam. I analyse membership of the Communist Party, 'mass organizations' (Farmers' Union, Women's Union, etc.) and other voluntary...

We often use delegation as a commitment device if a government faces problems of timeinconsistency. McCallum (1995, AER P&P) challenged this practice, claiming that delegation merely relocates the commitment problem but does not solve it. In a model where delegation and specific policies are...