Governments and NGOs are switching to phone- and Internet-based communication technologies to reduce costs and broaden access to public services. However, these technological shifts can backfire if they exacerbate administrative burden in high-need communities. We conducted a randomized...

Decentralization reforms represent a trade-off between economics of scale and localization, and the theoretical effects of any such change in administration may be both context dependent and central to the process of development. In this study, I use a combination of difference-in-differences...

The ability of the state to collect tax revenue is a crucial indicator in the process of economic development, yet how tax compliance develops in low-capacity countries remains poorly understood. I find a 6x the cost marginal rate of return to a simple text-based tax encouragement scheme...

Many argue that international norms influence government behavior, and that policies diffuse from country to country, because of idea exchanges within elite networks. However, politicians are not free to follow their foreign counterparts, because domestic constituencies constrain them. This...

How can international organizations shape national welfare states? The answer depends on why national governments comply with international organization mandates. Enforcement theories predict that states’ policy preferences determine implementation, whereas managerial theories attribute...

In recent years, the European Union (EU) has begun a gradual shift from traditional regulatory policymaking toward more flexible methods of coordination. For instance, while directives setting minimum regulations once dominated EU employment policy, since 1997, the Open Method of Coordination...

Stefan Svallfors' 1997 conclusion that patterns of attitudes towards redistribution are essentially the same across welfare-state regimes rests on a questionable treatment of missing data and on poor operationalization of the theoretical determinants of public opinion. Using demographic...