Software users can get a better deal on some software by organizing into a large buying group. Creating a consumer cooperative is a promising way to do this. Large group purchases can help solve problems in the software business, including monopoly power, the costs of intellectual "property"...

I exploit variation over time and space in the arrival of 3G Internet in South Africa to estimate its impact on political participation, electoral competition, voters’ preferences and protests. Combining granular coverage data with administrative records on municipal elections, I show that in...

This article discusses how the recent advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can be used to fight corruption. It draws on the current literature to argue that ICTs can be used to reduce corruption in many ways. First, ICTs can be used to promote transparency that may lead...

This paper introduces hyperbolic discounting into politics. In our model, politicians act according to the preferences of voters in order to be re-elected. As voters' preferences are dynamically inconsistent, the political process results in an allocation of the public budget that is distorted...

The application and design of public-private partnerships between the extremes of purely public or purely private task fulfilment in public services is, in practice, subject to political processes. Decisions about PPPs (realisation, arrangement) are taken in the political arena and are therefore...

This paper addresses the personal linkages between the public administration and the legislature that emerge because public servants pursue a political mandate. There are concerns that the strong representation of bureaucrats in many Western parliaments compromises the constitutionally proposed...

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...

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 paper contributes to an agenda that views the effects of policies and institutional reforms as dependent on the structure of political incentives for national and subnational political actors. The paper studies political incentive structures at the subnational level and the mechanisms...

In a country with weak institutional constraints on the executive, the real power might belong to the government bureaucracy rather than to an autocratic leader. We combine the Aghion-Tirole definition of formal and real authority with the Barro-Ferejohn model of political agency to study the...