Title: Essays on the Political Economy of Corruption and Rent-Seeking
Description: The dissertation is made up of three papers on the political economy of corruption and rent-seeking. Two of the papers make use of the historical experience of Britain to illustrate the theoretical points being made. The first paper shows that eighteenth-century Britain displayed patterns of corruption similar to those of developing countries today. To explain anti-corruption reforms, the paper develops a model in which the political elite is split between government officials and asset-owners. Government officials can act in one of two regimes: a corrupt one in which they are free to maximize their income from the provision of government goods, and one in which a regulated system leaves no room for individual profit maximization. Faced with a change in the level of demand for government goods, officials become able to extract rents at a level that leads to other members of the elite voting to enact reforms. The logic of the model is tested using a new dataset of members of the House of Commons and its main implications are validated.