How do policies that imply official recognition of ethnic identities affect democratic stability in the presence of redistributive conflict? In order to answer this question, I develop a game-theoretic model of two-dimensional electoral competition in which voters have divergent preferences over...

We study the effect of ethnic diversity on local public spending following fiscal decentralisation in a setting where local institutions are salient. Specifically, the latter affects coordination costs and thereby cooperative behaviour across the constituent ethnic groups. Our theory highlights...

We model simultaneous inter and within identity-group conflict in two territories connected by cross-territorial spill-overs. Within each territory, two groups contest the division of a group-specific public good, and all members contest the division of group income. Each group has a...

We model an infinitely repeated Tullock contest, over the sharing of some given resource, between two ethnic groups. The resource is allocated by a composite state institution according to relative ethnic control; hence the ethnic groups contest the extent of institutional ethnic bias. The...

We examine the consequences, of integrating large minorities into productivity-relevant majority ethno-linguistic norms, for distribution, ethnic conflict and crime. We develop a two-community model where such assimilation generates social gains by: (a) facilitating economic interaction, and (b)...