violence during democratization and the quality of democratic institutions abstract this paper investigates the impact of violent civil conflicts during the process of democratization on the institutional quality of the emerging democracies we propose a theory of endogenous regime transition in which violent conflict can arise in equilibrium peaceful transitions lead to a social contract that provides all groups with political representation and leads to better protection of civil liberties than violent transitions empirical evidence from the third wave of democratization based on a difference in difference methodology supports the theoretical predictions the findings suggest that compared to peaceful transitions violent conflicts during the democratic transition have persistent negative effects on the institutional quality of the emerging democracies

sacrifice and stigma reducing free riding in cults communes and other collectives this paper presents an economic analysis of religious behavior that accounts for the continuing success of groups with strange requirements and seemingly inefficient prohibitions the analysis does not presuppose any special motives for religious activity rather religion is modeled as a club good that displays positive returns to participatory crowding the analysis demonstrates that efficient religions with perfectly rational members may benefit from stigma self sacrifice and bizarre behavioral restrictions the model also addresses sacrifice in nonreligious social clubs fraternities communes political parties work groups and families

inequality democracy and the protection of property rights motivated by the observed relevance of institutional quality such as strong property rights for economic performance this research considers the emergence of property rights protection as a political outcome it argues that the support for such protection is greater the more equal income distribution and the smaller political bias when these conditions initially hold the politically influential rich elite may prefer to relinquish its power through democratisation in order to commit future policy makers to the enforcement of property rights thus ensuring larger investment and faster growth along the transition path in a very unequal economy however such democratisation will not take place

on the origins of property rights conflict and production in the state of nature i analyse the emergence of property rights in a model of conflict and production in the absence of institutions of enforcement the population of agents evolves dynamically through conflicts for possession of factor goods among pairs of randomly matched agents conflicts are incomplete information wars of attrition with an agent s type consisting of his or her independently drawn valuation of the prize and cost of competing for it i prove equilibrium existence and show that in the steady state of the game the population sorts into two stable groups resource haves and have nots in accordance with a known function of their primitive types

the value of trade agreements in the presence of political pressures an argument often heard in favor of trade agreements is that by committing to free trade a government can credibly distance itself from domestic lobbies but several existing models of endogenous protection suggest that governments have no interest in foreclosing interest group pressures since governments derive rents from the political process we develop a small country model in which factors are sector specific in the short run but mobile in the long run we show that in this setting a government may be worse off in the political equilibrium than under commitment to free trade and hence it may value a trade agreement

inequality democracy and institutions a critical review of recent research this paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the effect of economic and political inequality on institutions the current understanding suggests that unequal societies develop exploitative and inefficient institutions empirical research which is scant and has mainly concentrated at cross national level supports to some extent the existence of an inverse relationship between inequality and institutions but more analysis is needed future empirical research should undertake country state and micro level analysis which are a necessary complement to aggregate level studies the effect of inequality could also take place indirectly through the influence of inequality on democratization

why did the elites extend the suffrage democracy and the scope of government with an application to britain s age of reform a new rationale is presented for why an elite may want to expand the franchise even in the absence of threats to the established order expanding the franchise can turn politicians away from particularistic politics based on ad personam redistribution within the elite and foster competition based on programs with diffuse benefits if these programs are valuable a majority of the elite votes in favor of an extension of the franchise despite the absence of a threat from the disenfranchised we argue that the evolution of public spending and of political competition in nineteenth century britain is consistent with our model i introduction at the beginning of the nineteenth century in most countries narrow elites had a disproportionate influence on public affairs even in england where parliament was an influential institution suffrage was mostly the privilege of the wealthy and some members of parliament were elected in boroughs with as few as 100 voters while cities such as manchester did not have any representative a century later most western countries had universal male suffrage with female suffrage to arrive shortly thereafter what brought about this democratic revolution in many cases the elites were forced out of power after violent revolutions however there are important examples such as england where democratization took the form of gradual extensions of the suffrage and these were accompanied by little overt violence it is the peculiar pride of england that the record of social and political reform is to be found on the statute book not in the annals of revolution cheyney 1931 p vii such peaceful democratizations are difficult to rationalize within the benchmark political economic models in those models extending the franchise dilutes the elite s power to influence policy and results

endogenous enfranchisement when groups preferences conflict in their seminal paper aumann kurz and neyman found the surprising result that the choice of levels of public goods in a democracy is not affected by the distribution of voting rights this implies that groups of individuals may not value the franchise this conclusion however does not correspond to what we commonly observe we propose a new model to address the question of enfranchisement the main feature of our model is that it takes into account natural affinities such as religion or class that may exist between voters this allows us to show that while individuals may not value the vote they nonetheless value the franchise we also show that in the presence of nonconvexities it is more likely that the group in power will grant the franchise when preferences are severely opposed

the coevolution of economic and political development from monarchy to democracy this article establishes a unified political economy model to analyze the democratization process from monarchy to oligarchy and to democracy in the context of dynamic economic development as the predominant source of wealth evolves from land to physical capital and finally to human capital the relative economic and hence coercive power of land owners capitalists and workers shifts accordingly inducing the transition of the political system where political power is expanded from landlords to capitalists and finally to workers a smooth transition through political compromise facilitates efficient allocation of savings in physical capital followed by efficient investment in human capital

inequality in landownership the emergence of human capital promoting institutions and the great divergence this paper suggests that inequality in the distribution of landownership adversely affected the emergence of human capital promoting institutions e g public schooling and thus the pace and the nature of the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy contributing to the emergence of the great divergence in income per capita across countries the prediction of the theory regarding the adverse effect of the concentration of landownership on education expenditure is established empirically based on evidence from the beginning of the 20th century in the u s

insecure property and technological backwardness we consider the incentive to adopt superior technologies when private property is insecure the welfare costs of insecure property can be substantially greater than those commonly associated with diversion and with the disincentive effect induced by imperfect appropriation of returns when private property is sufficiently insecure anticipation of conflict over economic distribution gives rise to technological backwardness even though 1 superior technologies are readily available at zero cost and 2 the ex post diversion of resources might be small

sect subsidy and sacrifice an economist s view of ultra orthodox jews israeli ultra orthodox men study full time in yeshiva until age 40 on average why do fathers with families in poverty choose yeshiva over work draft deferments subsidize yeshiva attendance yet attendance typically continues long after exemption fertility rates are high tfr 7 6 and rising a social interaction approach explains these anomalies yeshiva attendance signals commitment to the community which provides mutual insurance to members prohibitions strengthen communities by effectively taxing real wages inducing high fertility historically the incursion of markets into traditional communities produces ultra orthodoxy subsidies induce dramatic reductions in labor supply and unparalleled increases in fertility illustrating extreme responses social groups may have to interventions

religion and work micro evidence from contemporary germany abstract using micro data from contemporary germany this paper studies the connection between protestantism and modern day labor market outcomes to address the endogeneity in self declared religion i exploit a provision in a sixteenth century peace treaty which determined the geographic distribution of catholics and protestants reduced form and instrumental variable estimates provide no evidence of an effect of protestantism on hourly wages however relative to their catholic counterparts protestants do appear to work longer hours the patterns in the data are difficult to reconcile with explanations based on institutional factors or religious differences in human capital acquisition religious differences in individuals values however can account for most of the estimated effects

institutional traps and economic growth this article s point of departure is that low quality institutions concentration of political power and material wealth and underdevelopment are persistent over time its analytical model views an equal distribution of political power as a commitment device to enhance institutional quality thereby promoting growth the politically powerful coalition contemplates relinquishing of its power through democratization weighing this advantageous consequence against the limit on own appropriative ability that it entails the possibility of two developmental paths is exhibited with concentration of political and economic power low quality institutions and slow growth and a more equal distribution of political and economic resources high quality institutions and faster growth

workers of the world unite franchise extensions and the threat of revolution in europe 1820 1938 abstract we test the hypothesis that the extension of the voting franchise in europe was related to the threat of revolution we contend that international diffusion of regime contention and information about revolutionary events happening in neighboring countries generate the necessary variation in the perceived threat of revolution using two samples of european countries covering the period from 1820 to 1938 we find robust evidence which is consistent with the threat of revolution hypothesis we also find some evidence that war triggered suffrage reform

are all democracies equally good the role of interactions between political environment and inequality for rule of law using cross country data we find evidence for a significant negative interaction effect between democracy and inequality in determining the quality of growth promoting institutions like rule of law democracy is associated with institutions of higher quality when inequality is lower

the political consequences of income shocks explaining the consolidation of democracy in france abstract this study analyzes the circumstances that enabled france to become in the late nineteenth century the first stable parliamentary democracy with universal male suffrage in europe it establishes a causal relationship between short term variations in local income and the electoral support for the coalition of republican parties that represented the newly established regime the results suggest the republican coalition won the parliamentary elections because most french regions did not suffer from transitory negative income shocks stemming from heavy precipitations they thus raise questions about the rationality of voters and ultimately the actual causes of the consolidation of democracy in france

anti dumping use and its effect on trade liberalisation evidence for the european union in this paper we examine the hypothesis that anti dumping actions may contribute to trade liberalisation by serving as a safety valve for protection seeking pressures using microlevel trade and tariff data at the hs 8 digit level for the european union we investigate whether the use of anti dumping measures has acted as a catalyst in subsequent multilateral tariff negotiations our findings suggest that anti dumping policies may have reduced the resistance of domestic protectionist forces towards major tariff reforms as they show significantly larger tariff cuts for products previously involved in an anti dumping investigation

governance and growth abstract because of its inappropriability protection of property rights is widely recognized as being the state s responsibility moreover recent empirical evidence suggests that it leads to higher investment levels and faster growth nevertheless the extent of property rights protection differs significantly across countries this paper endogenizes the emergence of property rights within a simple growth framework drawing on north north d 1990 institutions institutional change and economic performance cambridge university press a model is presented where economic performance and enforcement of property rights may reinforce each other initial conditions determine the economy s convergence to a high income or a low income steady state the existing empirical evidence offers a tentative support for this theory

insecurity of property rights and matching in the tenancy market this paper analyzes the functioning of land rental markets in the dominican republic using a new data set collected specifically to characterize the entire market we analyze the choice of the landlords and the tenants in the search for the optimal partner we show how insecure property rights leads to segmentation in the tenancy markets along socio economic group and hence severely limits access to land for the rural poor

race and charitable church activity i introduction faith based organizations provide social services for more than 70 million americans annually johnson tompkins and webb 2002 of the more than 350 000 congregations in the country more than 85 support some type of social service activity solomon 2003 biddle 1992 estimates that each year congregations spend 24 billion dollars on philanthropic activities these actions have gained new relevance for policymakers as the availability of public funding for charitable church activity has dramatically increased in the past decade starting with the charitable choice provision of the 1996 welfare reform law and continuing with the creation of centers for faith based and community initiatives located in 11 different federal agencies policymakers have instituted a devolution of federal funds intended to provide community services in 2005 more than 2 1 billion dollars in government grants were awarded to religious organizations by federal agencies office of the press secretary 2006 1 some observers fear that this policy trend will encourage racial discrimination by congregations leonard 2002 as bartkowski and regis 2003 write congregational definitions of legitimate social problems that members care about are in actuality influenced by various considerations among them racialized perceptions of welfare recipients past studies by economists have postulated but not substantiated that churchgoers warrant special consideration as individuals whose actions are sensitive to community demographics e g alesina and la ferrara 2000 gruber 2005 alternately some policymakers have championed faith based organizations because they are not likely to display sensitivity to community demographics when providing services as president bush stated in a speech in 2002 faith based charities work daily miracles because above all they recognize the dignity of every citizen and the possibilities of every life office of the press secretary 2002 john diiulio the former director of the white house office of faith based and community initiatives argued for charitable choice by saying government at all levels blatantly denies the equal protection of the laws to low income urban african american and latino children and families who depend disproportionately on faith based organizations for both basic life necessities and the delivery of specific social welfare benefits diiulio 2002 there is also noneconomic research consistent with this view e g billiet 1995 johnson 1977 the goal of this article was to examine whether congregations are affected by the racial composition of the local community when deciding whether and how much charitable activity to provide exploring this relationship is valuable not only because it addresses a key policy debate but also because it contributes to existing economic work on diversity and redistribution much prior work on socioeconomic conditions and tastes for redistribution relies on hypothetical questions asked to respondents in the general social survey or in gallop polls examples include alesina and la ferrara 2005b luttmer 2001 fong 2001 this article examines how a community s racial composition affects actual charitable expenditures studying actual charitable activities will be valuable if individuals stated preferences are different from their actual preferences or if stated preferences are sensitive to the wording of a question as is the case in alesina and la ferrara 2005b to investigate the effect of race on charitable church activity we compare how racially homogeneous congregations respond to the community s racial composition relative to other congregations several factors support this approach first members of homogeneous congregations have ostensibly taken race into account when selecting a congregation to attend consequently these congregations may be especially likely to display sensitivity to a community s racial composition when providing charitable services

political regimes and foreign intervention abstract we present a theory of endogenous political regimes that emphasizes foreign direct investment as a motive for foreign governments to either induce regime transitions or promote regime consolidations we characterize different forms of foreign intervention and identify the conditions under which they occur we highlight new channels through which economic factors affect political regime choices foreign intervention is most likely to originate from countries where the government has a substantial pro investor bias and to be directed at destinations where fdi is highly profitable and where income inequality is high foreign sponsored coups d etat are more likely to be directed at democratic governments of poor countries in destinations where fdi is highly profitable but the domestic elite is weak foreign intervention tends to be aimed at stabilizing dictatorships we relate the analysis to evidence on foreign intervention from around the world

dynamic stability and reform of political institutions abstract this paper examines endogenous institutional change in a class of dynamic political games the political aggregation rules used at date t 1 are instrumental choices under rules at date t effectively rules are players who can strategically delegate future policy making authority to different rules a political rule is stable if it selects itself a reform occurs when an alternative rule is selected the stability of a political rule is shown to depend on whether its choices are dynamically consistent for instance simple majority rules can be shown to be dynamically consistent in many common environments where wealth weighted voting rules are not the result extends to political rules that incorporate private activities such as extra legal protests threats or private investment the approach is one way of understanding various explanations of institutional change proposed in the literature a parametric model of public goods provision gives an illustration

the church versus the mall what happens when religion faces increased secular competition recently economists have begun to consider the causes and consequences of religious participation an unanswered question in this literature is the effect upon individuals of changes in the opportunity cost of religious participation in this paper we identify a policy driven change in the opportunity cost of religious participation based on state laws that prohibit retail activity on sunday known as blue laws many states have repealed these laws in recent years raising the opportunity cost of religious participation we use a variety of data sets to show that when a state repeals its blue laws religious attendance falls and that church donations and spending fall as well these results do not seem to be driven by declines in religiosity prior to the law change nor do we see comparable declines in membership in or giving to nonreligious organizations after a state repeals its laws we then assess the effects of changes in these laws on drinking and drug use behavior in the nlsy we find that repealing blue laws leads to an increase in drinking and drug use and that this increase is found only among the initially religious individuals who were affected by the blue laws the effect is economically significant for example the gap in heavy drinking between religious and nonreligious individuals falls by about half after the laws are repealed

emergent extremism in a multi agent model of religious clubs i introduction religious extremism is as old as religion itself but the tendency to promote militancy and terrorism from within extremist religions appears to be much more common now than in times past juergensmeyer 2001 stern 2003 wiktorowicz 2005 1 today s terrorists routinely frame their objectives in religious terms and organize their activities within religious movements this shift is not due to increased militancy within religion as a whole not even within the stricter subset of religious groups commonly labeled sectarian or fundamentalist bromley and melton 2002 marty and appleby 1995 rather groups with militant objectives are increasingly leveraging the latent potential for violence within extremist religion krueger and maleckova 2003 and krueger 2007 have shown that contrary to popular hypotheses regarding the salience of poverty and education it is instead institutional conditions such as civil liberties that contribute to the origination of terrorists within a country religious extremism has been shown to be a potentially powerful input into the production of terrorism berman 2004 2 and the origination of terrorists has been empirically connected to civil liberties we seek to complete the triangle and connect religious extremism to social conditions in an extension of existing theory and test the predictions of the model in an empirical context with an eye toward civil liberties this paper extends previous models of religious clubs to better account for observed patterns of extremism across different settings and test policies most likely to reduce the appeal of extremism economists at first blush should have trouble explaining the survival of groups that demand large sacrifices from their members successful religious groups however routinely impose all sorts of apparently unproductive costs on their members iannaccone 1992 introduced a formal model of religious clubs within which apparently irrational sacrifice and stigma enhances the individual and collective utility his model demonstrated the feasibility of extremist groups but does less to explain the relative prevalence of extremism across time and place further the original model allows for only corner solutions and as such the viability of extreme groups is indistinguishable from the viability of the more moderate groups they must compete with for members in the religious marketplace in section ii we revisit analyze and extend the club model of religion we push the analysis of the original model exploring sacrifice substitutability of club and private goods and their relationships to member commitment and the viability of extremist groups in this preliminary analysis we illustrate not only the potential insights of the club theory of religion into the strength and viability of extremist groups but also the limitations inherent to the representative agent model we proceed by extending the model in a multi agent ma computational framework this framework permits us to analyze the distributions of agents and clubs that make up a religious economy the computational nature of the model is critical because it allows for sufficient heterogeneity of agents and clubs and given this heterogeneity agent decision making absent closed form solutions via nash equilibria extremists groups emerge as just one segment the high cost tail of a distribution of religious clubs that range across the full spectrum of potential group imposed sacrifice and stigma extremism is identifiable and comparable in the model because it exists within a full spectrum of clubs by varying the parameters of the model that control the distribution of secular wages across agents and the degree of substitutability between religious and secular commodities we can better explain where and when religious extremism is most popular its strength relative to more moderate groups and which economic policies reduce its prevalence

factor endowments inequality and paths of development among new world economies whereas traditional explanations of differences in long run paths of development across the americas generally point to the significance of differences in national heritage or religion we highlight the relevance of stark contrasts in the degree of inequality in wealth human capital and political power in accounting for how fundamental economic institutions evolved over time we argue moreover that the roots of these disparities in the extent of inequality lay in differences in the initial factor endowments dating back to the era of european colonization we document through comparative studies of suffrage public land and schooling policies systematic patterns by which societies in the americas that began with more extreme inequality or heterogeneity in the population were more likely to develop institutional structures that greatly advantaged members of elite classes and disadvantaging the bulk of the population by providing them with more political influence and access to economic opportunities the clear implication is that institutions should not be presumed to be exogenous economists need to learn more about where they come from to understand their relation to economic development our findings not only contribute to our knowledge of why extreme differences in the extent of inequality across new world economies have persisted for centuries but also to the study of processes of long run economic growth past and present

prosperity without conflict abstract social conflict and slow growth are features of many developing economies this paper considers the role institutions of property rights and conflict management can play in both achieving prosperity and mitigating conflict in these economies we study how introducing conflict over economic distribution into an otherwise standard model of growth can shape optimal second best taxation policy when diversionary activities cannot be taxed in this context we find that the maximization of economic efficiency may call for a reduction in growth in order to mitigate the problem of diversion even though the economy s growth is inefficiently slow in the absence of taxation this is so when institutional quality is sufficiently poor but not otherwise the paper warns against the conventional justification of growth promoting policies on efficiency grounds independently of institutions

identifying the causal effect of income on religiosity using the earned income tax credit abstract how do economic conditions income and the generosity of social insurance affect religious behavior this paper provides novel evidence for the united states using variation in earned income tax credit benefits across states over time and by number of children in the raw data income and religiosity have a trivial relationship in contrast the instrumental variables strategy shows that increases in income from the eitc are found to sizably reduce religious attendance among low income individuals among individuals who attend the results indicate that an additional 1000 in annual income is associated with a decrease of roughly 1 service per year as compared to an average of 16 services per year the effect arises mainly along the intensive margin decreasing devout behavior and increasing more marginal attendance but having little impact on whether an individual participates at all or on beliefs there are also minimal effects on the occurrence and amount of contributions to religious organizations the results extend our understanding of the determinants of religiosity the relationship between governmental income support and religious behavior and the social effects of the earned income tax credit

a quantitative theory of political transitions we develop a quantitative theory of repeated political transitions driven by revolts and reforms in the model the beliefs of disenfranchised citizens play a key role in determining revolutionary pressure which in interaction with preemptive reforms determine regime dynamics we study the quantitative implications of the model by fitting it to data on the universe of political regimes existing between 1946 and 2010 the estimated model generates a process of political transitions that looks remarkably close to the data replicating the empirical shape of transition hazards the frequency of revolts relative to reforms the distribution of newly established regime types after revolts and reforms and the unconditional distribution over regime types

the origins of democracy a model with application to ancient greece abstract this paper seeks to provide an improved understanding of the origins of democracy it begins by developing a theoretical model to demonstrate how exogenous economic conditions can influence the incentives to establish democratic institutions the model predicts that democratic institutions will expand where they mitigate important time inconsistency problems and therefore encourage investment exogenous conditions determine the magnitude of those time inconsistency problems and hence the likelihood of democracy a comparison of ancient greek city states suggests that the conditions under which democracy first emerged support the model other potential applications are discussed

dictators and oligarchs a dynamic theory of contested property rights in an economy with weak economic and political institutions the major institutional choices are made strategically by oligarchs and dictators the conventional wisdom presumes that as rent seeking is harmful for oligarchs themselves institutions such as enforcement of the property rights will emerge eventually we explicitly model a dynamic game between oligarchs and a dictator who can contain rent seeking the oligarchs choose either a weak dictator who can be overthrown by an individual oligarch or a strong dictator who can only be replaced via a consensus of oligarchs in equilibrium no dictator can commit to both i protecting the oligarchs property rights from the other oligarchs and ii not expropriating oligarchs himself we show that a weak dictator does not limit rent seeking a strong dictator does reduce rent seeking but also expropriates individual oligarchs we show that even though eliminating rent seeking is pareto optimal weak dictators do get appointed in equilibrium and rent seeking continues this outcome is especially likely when economic environment is highly volatile

the injustice of inequality in many countries the operation of legal political and regulatory institutions is subverted by the wealthy and the politically powerful for their own benefit this subversion takes the form of corruption intimidation and other forms of influence we present a model of such institutional subversion focusing specifically on courts and of the effects of inequality in economic and political resources on the magnitude of subversion we then use the model to analyze the consequences of institutional subversion for the law and order environment in the country as well as for capital accumulation and growth we illustrate the model with historical evidence from gilded age united states and the transition economies of the 1990s we also present some cross country evidence consistent with the basic prediction of the model

why did the west extend the franchise democracy inequality and growth in historical perspective during the nineteenth century most western societies extended voting rights a decision that led to unprecedented redistributive programs we argue that these political reforms can be viewed as strategic decisions by the political elite to prevent widespread social unrest and revolution political transition rather than redistribution under existing political institutions occurs because current transfers do not ensure future transfers while the extension of the franchise changes future political equilibria and acts as a commitment to redistribution our theory also offers a novel explanation for the kuznets curve in many western economies during this period with the fall in inequality following redistribution due to democratization i introduction the nineteenth century was a period of fundamental political reform and unprecedented changes in taxation and redistribution britain for example was transformed from an oligarchy run by an elite to a democracy the franchise was extended in 1832 and then again in 1867 and 1884 transferring voting rights to portions of the society with no previous political representation the decades after the political reforms witnessed radical social reforms increased taxation and the extension of education to the masses moreover as noted by kuznets inequality which was previously increasing started to decline during this period the gini coefficient for income inequality in england and wales had risen from 0 400 in 1823 to 0 627 in 1871 but fell to 0 443 in 1901 two key factors in the reduction in inequality were the increase in the proportion of skilled workers williamson 1985 and the redistribution of income toward the poorer segments of the society for example taxes rose from 8 12 percent of national product in 1867 to 18 8 percent by 1927 and the progressivity of the tax system increased substantially see lindert 1989

how to get the snowball rolling and extend the franchise voting on the great reform act of 1832 this paper suggests a new approach to analyzing the causes of franchise extension based on a new dataset it provides a detailed econometric study of the great reform act of 1832 in the united kingdom the analysis yields four main results first modernization theory receives limited support second the reform enjoyed some measure of popular support third the threat of revolution had an asymmetric impact on the voting behavior of the pro reform whigs and the anti reform tories while the threat might have convinced reluctant reformers among the whig politicians and among their patrons to support the bill it seems to have hardened the resistance to reform among the tories fourth ideology played a critical role nevertheless it also appears that self interest and political expedience explained the votes of many members of parliament

political and economic inequities and the shaping of institutions and redistribution this article studies the joint effect of political and economic inequalities on redistributive taxation and institutional quality the theoretical model suggests that income inequality coupled with political bias in favor of the rich decreases redistribution and lowers institutional quality the effect of the former is to increase productive investment and the effect of the latter is to decrease it with resulting ambiguous implications for economic growth testing these predictions empirically in a panel of countries we find that inequality has a negative effect on both institutional quality and redistribution

anti dumping a growing problem in international trade this paper discusses the issue of anti dumping ad proliferation ad is used more frequently by more countries and against more products than ever in its history i review ad filing patterns with an emphasis on the scope of countries and industries seeking protection recent trends suggest that the widespread embrace of ad protection makes the prospect for ad reform increasingly unlikely ad is no longer being used solely by high income developed countries it is increasingly being used by middle income and even lower income countries new users have chosen to use ad very intensively per dollar of imports the new users have filed ad cases up to 15 20 times more frequently than the traditional ad users such as the us and eu the evolving set of ad users complicates ad negotiations in the near term strong opposition by the us and eu makes reform a highly unlikely outcome in the longer run rising use of ad against the us and eu could conceivably weaken their support for ad yet the same trends that might finally cause the us and eu to realise ad is a failed policy will likely make reform impossible

investment in the absence of property rights the role of incumbency advantages in many situations the individuals who can generate some output must enter a contest for appropriating this output this paper analyses the investment incentives of such agents and the role of incumbency advantages in the contest depending on the advantages an increase in the productivity of the investment can decrease or increase the amount of investment the results are applied to autocrats investment behavior and job specific investment in organizations

the political class and redistributive policies we study the eect of the composition of the political class on the size of government first we use a citizen candidate model to show that the extension of surage may be inconsequential for government spending when there are pre existing stricter requirements for holding oce we then test this prediction empirically using data from the 13 u s original colonies we nd that the extension of the franchise did not aect government spending or the composition of the political class however the subsequent elimination of economic qualications to hold oce increased government spending and enriched the class heterogeneity

misallocation of talent and human capital political economy analysis abstract mismatches in the labor market specifically because of underrepresentation of various population groups carry significant economic cost in this paper we argue using a simple analytical model that an additional cost component is related to the effect of such underrepresentation on incentives to invest in human capital which results in a mutual feedback relationship between the labor market and the skill acquisition market and may lead to economy s divergence further it is shown that an initially advantaged group may have an incentive to minimize the bias against the disadvantaged group and that political enfranchisement is the means to achieve a commitment to such a policy

do religious proscriptions matter evidence from a theory based test a large literature shows that religious participation is associated with various behaviors and outcomes but researchers lack an accepted instrument for religion and have struggled to establish whether these associations are causal using the canonical economic model of religiosity i develop an empirical test to investigate the importance of religious participation in particular religious proscriptions and rules on determining behavior the test relies on exogenous variation in the cost of secular activities rather than an instrument for religious participation several empirical applications of this test are conducted the results indicate a strong role for religious proscriptions in determining behavior

casinos crime and community costs we examine the relationship between casinos and crime using county level data for the united states between 1977 and 1996 casinos were nonexistent outside nevada before 1978 and expanded to many other states during our sample period most factors that reduce crime occur before or shortly after a casino opens whereas those that increase crime including problem and pathological gambling occur over time the results suggest that the effect on crime is low shortly after a casino opens and grows over time roughly 8 of crime in casino counties in 1996 was attributable to casinos costing the average adult 75 per year

inequality and institutions abstract this paper presents theory and evidence on the relationship between inequality and institutional quality we exhibit a model in which the two may dynamically reinforce each other and set to test this relationship with a broad array of institutional measures the double causality between institutional strength and a more equal distribution of income is empirically established using dynamic panel and linear feedback analysis

financial development income inequality and country risk abstract this study explores the non linear effects of both finance development and country risks on income inequality when countries risk changes through a broad sample of 59 countries over the period 1985 2015 using the panel smooth transition regression model our results present evidence of the different relationships among income inequality finance development and country risks under different degrees of country risk for the full sample we find evidence of the inequality widening hypothesis under unstable economic stable financial and stable political environments for the sub samples under stable economic and financial environments high income countries income inequality can be improved through financial development moreover we find a positive relationship between financial development and income inequality for low income countries