Florian Dorn erstellte diesen Beitrag während seines Promotionsstudiums an der Universität München (LMU). Die Studie wurde im September 2020 abgeschlossen und von der Fakultät für Volkswirtschaftslehre als Dissertation angenommen. Die Dissertation trägt zur Empirie der Ökonomie des...

We assess Gordon Tullock's work on dictatorship and revolutions using a common analytic framework that captures the dynamics of mutually reinforcing perceptions within a potentially rebelling subgroup of a population. We can reconstruct all of Tullock's central findings but we also find him...

Threats of mass revolts could effectively constrain a dictator's public policy if it were not for the collective-action problem. Mass revolts nevertheless happen, but they follow a stochastic pattern. We describe this pattern in a threshold model of collective action and integrate it into an...

A theory is introduced to systematically explain autocracies' diverse experiences with taxation. State power relative to citizens' capacity for violence determines the limit of taxation, the highest tax rate that citizens will tolerate and pay. Rulers can spend resources on coercion to increase...

Since the early 1980s a wave of liberalizing reforms has swept over the world. While the stated motivation for these reforms has usually been to increase economic efficiency, some critics have instead inferred ulterior motives and a desire to enrich certain (already rich) people at the expense...

We often use delegation as a commitment device if a government faces problems of timeinconsistency. McCallum (1995, AER P&P) challenged this practice, claiming that delegation merely relocates the commitment problem but does not solve it. In a model where delegation and specific policies are...

Since the early 1980s a wave of liberalizing reforms has swept over the world. While the stated motivation for these reforms has usually been to increase economic efficiency, some critics have instead inferred ulterior motives and a desire to enrich certain (already rich) people at the expense...

This paper examines determinants of revolutionary behaviour. We study the role of freedom of communication, repression of opposition and the government’s selfishness. Combining econometric analysis of survey data with a laboratory experiment, we analyse how these factors affect preferences for...