Most analyses of property rights and economic development point to the negative influence of insecure property rights on private investment. Keefer and Knack focus instead on the largely unexamined effects of insecure property rights on government policy choices. They identify one significant...

The literature argues that the presence of multiple veto players (government decisionmakers) with polarized interests increases the credibility of sovereign commitments, but reduces the ability of governments to adjust policies in the event of exogenous shocks that jeopardize their ability to...

One strand of research argues that polarized societies find it difficult to reach political consensus on appropriate responses to crises. Another strand focuses on redistribution, asking whether income inequality stifles growth by increasing political incentives to redistribute. Which is...

Most efforts to trace the effects of income inequality on growth have focused on redistribution. However, empirical investigation has not substantiated either the positive association of income inequality with redistribution or the negative association of redistribution with economic growth. The...

Over the past decade, donors of foreign aid quadrupled their annual contributions to trust funds at the World Bank. This earmarking of contributions to donors' preferred recipient countries and issues has raised concerns about the alignment of trust funds with the performance-based allocations...