We study the opportunistic political budget cycle in the London Metropolitan Boroughs between 1902 and 1937 under two different suffrage regimes: taxpayer suffrage (1902-1914) and universal suffrage (1921-1937). We argue and find supporting evidence that the political budget cycle operates...

In this this paper we combine economic factors that have strong trends and political factors that are stationary in a dynamic, empirical model of the evolution of public policy over a very long period in a stable democracy. The role of variation in the intensity of political competition is the...

The introduction of income taxation was a landmark in the development of the fiscal state in Western Europe and elsewhere. This paper presents an event history study of the adoption of the income tax in 11 Western European countries between 1815 and 1941. We find evidence that social learning,...

This paper suggests a new approach to analyze the causes of franchise extension. Based on a new dataset, it provides a detailed econometric study of the Great Reform Act of 1832 in the United Kingdom. The econometric analysis yields four main results. First, modernization theory only receives...

This paper studies how human capital affects agents' tendency to participate in revolutions and consequently political outcomes. We show that since human capital is not expropriatable in the way land or other assets are, revolutions are more attractive if human capital is an important source of...

The paper provides an empirical analysis of fiscal incentives for Russian regional governments to foster economic growth and development. It points out several serious problems with previous empirical studies of fiscal incentives into Russian federalism, develops a new theoretical framework for...

Franchises are peculiar in two ways: first, the authority of franchisees is largely informal rather than formal. The efficiency of franchises is often attributed to their initiative and autonomy. Yet, in franchise contracts, franchisees agree to submit to the sometimes arbitrary will of the...

There has been much controversy over the merits of government regulation to protect growers and franchisees from hold-up at the hands of integrators and franchisors. Typically, economic argument have discouraged regulation, since direct evidence for hold-up is weak and bargaining should yield...

Practising is a matter of increasing the reliability of ones skills rather than relying on a tool or a strike of genius to get it right. Once perfection has been achieved the individual will aim for higher quality since the effort is more likely to be worthwhile. Furthermore because the returns...

Rational choice models predict that political competition and political participation have opposite effects on the size of government. We investigate these theories using data from a panel of 18 Latin American countries during the 20th century. Our research builds evidence for the prediction...