We model growth in dictatorships facing each period an endogenous probaibility of "political catastrophe" that would extinguish the regime's wealth ability. Domestic capital exhibits a bifurcation point determining economic growth or shrinkage. With low initial domestic capital the dictator...

By promoting some of the poor into the middle class and thereby co-opting them into the system, a self-interested elite reduces the threat of political instability and the risk of being overthrown. Co-optation is accomplished through the transfer of resources to some of the poor, enabling them...

We model growth in dictatorships facing each period an endogenous probability of ``political catastrophe'' that would extinguish the regime's wealth extraction ability. Domestic capital exhibits a bifurcation point determining economic growth or shrinkage. With low initial domestic capital the...

We model growth in dictatorships facing each period an endogenous probability of “political catastrophe'' that would extinguish the regime's wealth extraction ability. Domestic capital exhibits a bifurcation point determining economic growth or shrinkage. With low initial domestic capital the...

We model growth in dictatorships facing each period an endogenous probability of ‘political catastrophe’ that would extinguish the regime's wealth extraction ability. Domestic capital exhibits a bifurcation point determining economic growth or shrinkage. With low initial domestic capital the...

We present a detailed, high-frequency data set on the civil conflict in Colombia during the period 1988-2002. We briefly introduce the Colombian case and the methodological issues that hinder data collection in civil wars, before presenting the pattern over time of conflict actions and intensity...

Analysis of our new, 16-year dataset on the Colombian civil war finds under Uribe: guerrilla and paramilitary attacks dropping sharply to long-run averages since 1988, lower for April- December, 2003; government- guerrilla clashes at all-time highs, exceeding guerrilla attacks; civilian killings...

We compare the treatment of Colombia in large cross-country conflict datasets with the information of the detailed micro dataset of Restrepo, Spagat and Vargas (2003). We find a general tendency of the big datasets to underestimate the magnitude of the Colombian conflict and to mischaracterize...

Transition economies have an initial condition of high human capital relative to GDP per capita. But they will not necessarily realize their latent high growth potential. In the model, at a good equilibrium a large number of children of well-educated parents take advantage of their family...