This paper proposes a mechanism to overcome the possibility that political parties may block the nomination of High-Court judges when the Parliament is involved in their nomination and theirmandate expires on a fixed date. This possibility arises when the default option is that the judge whose...

This paper examines the nature and evolution of horizontal and vertical human-capital inequality in South Africa since the end of apartheid. Using census data from 1996, 2001, and 2011, we use different measures of years of schooling to examine the dynamics both across and within racial,...

Building on the literature of the political economy of taxation, this article explores the relationship between political competition and tax revenues using a sample of 89 developing countries from 1988 to 2010. Owing to the inertia of tax variables, we estimate a dynamic panel data model using...

This article develops an empirical measure of electoral availability, i.e., the micro perspective of political competition. As existing research conceptualizes political competition mainly as a macro- or party-level phenomenon, the micro perspective remains underdeveloped and, therefore, an...

We study the effect of term limits on voter turnout in local Italian elections. Since 2014 the Italian law allows mayors in municipalities with a population size lower than 3,000 inhabitants to re-run for a third term, whereas mayors in cities with a number of residents above the cutoff still...

We investigate the extent to which the intensity of political competition moderates the governance issues that arise in relation to Canada’s fiscal structure. By fiscal structure we mean three distinct but interrelated fiscal dimensions of the state: financial stability, long run size and...

The influence of politics on economic policy is not fully understood. The challenge to ensure political inclusiveness and economic prosperity remains. Perhaps, one way to attain this objective is by increasing political competition. This paper gathers empirical evidence from Pakistan, a country...

Political competition, party strategy and communication in the era of social media are growing issues. Due to the increasing social media presence of parties and voters alike, direct communication is more important for party competition. This paper aims to improve the methodological approach...

Abstract What accounts for the existence of positive energy taxes in the US, given that such taxes are regressive and that the income distribution is skewed to the right? The traditional majority-voting equilibrium approach suggests a subsidy; thus we also look at two alternatives. These are the...

We extend a simple version of the citizen candidacy model (developed by Osborne-Slivinski (1996) and Besley-Coate (1997)) to an asymmetric information setting, in which the type of a given individual is assumed to be private information. Focusing on a particular class of perfect Bayesian...