With corruption, prohibition is better at curtailing consumption than taxation. Prohibition enforcers are incentivized to enforce against illegal producers to extract bribes from them, while the latter willingly pay the bribes to keep supplying the market. In equilibrium, total quantity is...

The trade route between Manila and Mexico was a monopoly of the Spanish Crown for more than 250 years. The ships that sailed this route — the Manila Galleons, were “the richest ships in all the oceans”, but much of the wealth sank at sea and remains undiscovered. We introduce a newly...

When do resource revenues increase corruption? I develop a model of public good provision by a politician who obtains rents by stealing government revenues or extracting bribes in exchange for public goods spending. I show there is a threshold level of revenues below which the politician does...

Does corruption increase or decrease with public goods spending? I develop a model of public good provision by a rent-seeking political agent who can obtain rents by stealing government revenues and/or extracting bribes from the private sector in exchange for public goods. I show there is a...

When do citizens tolerate corrupt, but competent, politicians? This paper formally establishes conditions under which citizens trade off corruption for competence. First, the regime has to be sufficiently democratic such that a corrupt politician has to bargain with citizens in order to stay in...

The trade route between Manila and Mexico was a monopoly of the Spanish Crown for more than 250 years. The Manila Galleons were “the richest ships in all the oceans”, but much of the wealth sank at sea and remain undiscovered. We introduce a newly constructed data set of all of the ships...