Does additional government spending improve the electoral chances of incumbent political parties? This paper provides the first quasi-experimental evidence on this question. Our research design exploits discontinuities in federal funding to local governments in Brazil around several population...

We present a tractable stochastic endogenous growth model that explains how social capital influences economic development. In our model, social capital increases citizens' awareness of government activity. Hence, it alleviates the electoral incentives to under- invest in education, whose...

Why do public-sector workers receive so much of their compensation in the form of pensions and other benefits? This paper presents a political economy model in which politicians compete for taxpayers' ’and government employees' votes by promising compensation packages, but some voters cannot...

Protectionism enjoys surprising popular support, in spite of deadweight losses. At the same time, trade barriers appear to decline with public information about protection. This paper develops an electoral model with heterogeneously informed voters which explains both facts and predicts the...

We study the social, demographic and economic origins of social security. The data for the U.S. and for a cross section of countries suggest that urbanization and industrialization are associated with the rise of social insurance. We describe an OLG model in which demographics, technology, and...

Does fiscal consolidation lead to social unrest? Using cross-country evidence for the period 1919 to 2008, we examine the extent to which societies become unstable after budget cuts. The results show a clear correlation between fiscal retrenchment and instability. Expenditure cuts are...