A large literature is focused on governments' fiscal policy making under the disciplining force of fiscal rules. That literature is devoted to map governments' incentives for (non)compliance, but widely ignores the role of fiscal rule enforcement. This is remarkable, given the situation in the...

This article presents a political economic analysis of exit from federations. Over time, members' benefits from being in a federation can fluctuate because of changes in the state of the world. If a member stops benefitting, it may wish to secede i.e. exit the federation. Based on a real options...

The 1980s and first half of the 1990s were a very active period in the field of political economy of agricultural protection. While the past decade has witnessed a slowdown in this area, there have been very important developments on political economy in other parts of the economics profession....

Societies in Western civilisation enforce their rules through formal institutions such as secularism (SES), whereas in less developed civilisations often rely on informal institutions such as religion (RES). The present paper attempts to explain the determinants of societies’ choice between...