in the World Values Survey, and democracy, all of which are good for growth as reflected in the purchasing power of per …

sector, and show that in a feudal society (dominated by landed elites) productivity-enhancing public investments like the …

The textbook theory of public finance delineates three primary functions of government: 1) to provide for public goods … exert such pressure on the political system that the whole edifice of liberal democracy is seriously threatened. Hence …

entrepreneurial elite, resulting in economic policy and institutions which are more conducive to entrepreneurship and productivity …

The aim of this paper is to examine the evolution of recruitment of elites and to investigate the nature of the links … between recruitment of elites and economic growth. The main change that occurred in the way the Western world trained its … elites is that meritocracy became the basis for their recruitment. Although meritocratic selection should result in the best …

probability of a transition from autocracy to democracy and reduces the probability of democratic survival. … have taken place. We test this unexplored implication of the theory empirically. We find in a world sample from 1970 to …

effects of direct democracy. Town meetings (popular assemblies) replace local councils in small German municipalities below a … specific population threshold. Difference-in-differences, RD and event study estimates consistently show that direct democracy …% under direct democracy. We do not find that business tax rates change. Direct democracy allows citizens to design tax …

-economic one. As has been noted, reflections on these points induce to revise the picture of democracy as a regime producing … rationally (in the sense of rational choice theory) pursuing them. This leads to a certain skepticism towards the idealization of … democracy as human rationality in pursuit of the common good, which serves to provide cover for those who profit from the …