Although in recent years growing interest has been shown by social scientists and international organizations regarding the production of well-being indicators that go beyond GDP, the comparative political economy of developed countries has rarely investigated this topic. This was largely due to...

We exploit a discontinuity in Brazilian municipal election rules to investigate whether political competition has a causal impact on policy choices. In municipalities with less than 200,000 voters mayors are elected with a plurality of the vote. In municipalities with more than 200,000 voters a...

el presente trabajo se evalúa el efecto que tienen las políticas sectoriales implementadas en México durante su modernización y su impacto en la organización territorial de la producción, así como la pertinencia de las reformas institucionales post fordistas y su nexo con el desarrollo...

Purpose – Will a free trade agreement (FTA) between nations be politically viable? Under political lobbying, which incentives determine whether FTAs will be signed or not? Will FTAs steadily include more countries until we reach a worldwide free trade? The paper addresses these questions using...

This paper considers contests in which the efforts of the players determine the value of the prize. Players may have different valuations of the prize and different abilities to convert expenditures to productive efforts. In addition, players may face different financial constraints. This paper...

This paper introduces the concept of emotions into the standard litigation contest. Positive or negative emotions emerge when litigants either win or lose at trial and depend in particular on the level of defendant fault. Our findings establish that standard results of litigation contests change...