We empirically investigate the hypothesis that when democracies are young, or still fragile and unconsolidated, the size of government (in terms of consumption, debt and share to GDP) tends to increase in an attempt to buy out the electorate, so that democracy becomes acceptable and ?the only...

In this paper I investigate whether democracy in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has had any effect on education during the 1980-2009 period. The results, based on panel time-series analysis (I use the Pooled OLS and Fixed Effects estimators in order to deal with heterogeneity...

In this paper we test for the populist view of inflation in South America during the eventful period between 1970 and 2007, a period which captures the latest democratic transition in the continent, episodes of hyperinflation and finally macroeconomic stabilisation. The results—based on panel...

IThis paper analyses the modernisation hypothesis in the sub-Saharan African region. Using a sample of 48 countries from 1960 to 2010 and dynamic panel data analysis, we find a significant and negative relationship between income and democracy, an indication that the hypothesis may not hold in...

In this paper we investigate whether democracy in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has had any impact on education during the 1980-2009 period. The results, based on panel time-series analysis (we use the Pooled OLS, Fixed Effects and Fixed Effects with Instrumental Variables...

We investigate in this paper the hypothesis that when democracies are young, or still fragile and unconsolidated, the size of government tends to increase, predictably in an attempt of redistribution, or to buy out the electorate, so that democracy becomes acceptable and "the only game in town"....

We investigate in this paper what are the main determinants of government and external debt in South America. Our sample purposely includes all nine South American countries that re-democratised in the last thirty years or so, and the data cover the period 1970-2007. The results, based on...

We investigate in this paper whether the exogenous version of the modernisation hypothesis holds in South America, or whether democracy needs development for its own consolidation. We use a sample of all nine countries that re-democratised in the last thirty years or so and the data sets cover...