"The twentieth century witnessed the triumph of democratic capitalism in the industrialized West, with widespread popular support for both free markets and representative elections. Today, that political consensus appears to be breaking down, disrupted by polarization and income inequality,...

Politische Faktoren werden von der Literatur, die einen umfangreicheren öffentlichen Sektor auf einene höheren Grad an Aussenhandelsintegration zurückführt, zumeist vernachlässigt. Wenn die Offenheit steigt übernimmt der Staat in seiner Funktion als sozialer Planer eine wichtige Rolle zur...

We develop a theory of democratization that integrates both electoral calculations and economic incentives to explain the institutional choices of political actors. Left-leaning (liberal) politicians, who, given their location in the policy space, are more likely to receive the support of newly...

This paper explores, both formally and empirically, the political accountability mechanisms that lie behind the varying levels of public corruption and of effective governance taking place across nations. The first section develops a principal-agent model in which good governance is a function...

Spain stands as one of the few countries in the world which have completed a successful transition from authoritarianism and relative underdevelopment to democracy and economic abundance in the last half century. This paper explores the nature and causes of the economic underdevelopment of Spain...