In stateless societies, coercion is privately provided; violence is employed to engage in, and to defend against, predation. At best, violence results in mere redistribution; being destructive, it more often results in a loss of social welfare. When organized, however, violence can be socially...

This paper implements a qualitative, narrative approach to investigate entrepreneurs' personal experience of stigma associated with venture failure. Findings draw on the lived experience of 12 entrepreneurs and tell a collective story of how stigma affects entrepreneurs, shapes their actions,...

Political business cycle (PBC) theory and empirics typically assume that elections are competitive. Yet, as empirical work on PBCs turns increasingly to developing countries for evidence, this assumption becomes untenable. We propose and test two empirical hypotheses regarding PBCs: first, we...