A notable feature of post-World War II civil wars is their very long average duration. We provide a theory of the persistence of civil wars. The civilian government can successfully defeat rebellious factions only by creating a relatively strong army. In weakly institutionalized polities this...

I analyze an economy in which firms can undertake both labor- and capital-augmenting technological improvements. In the long run, the economy resembles the standard growth model with purely labor-augmenting technical change, and the share of labor in GDP is constant. Along the transition path,...

We generalize the Diamond-Mirrlees production efficiency theorem, that there should be no taxes on sectors producing pure intermediate goods, to an environment with political economy constraints. In our economy, allocations and taxation are decided by self-interested politicians without the...

Health conditions and disease environments are important for economic outcomes. This paper argues that the main impact of disease environments on the economic development of nations is not due to the direct effect of health conditions on income, but rather because of their indirect effect via...