We investigate how the link between individual schooling and political participation is affected by country characteristics. We introduce a focus on a set of variables - namely factor endowments - which influence the relative productivity of human capital in political versus production...

We document a negative relationship between population size and inequality in the cross-country data. We propose an explanation built on the existence of a size effect in the political economy of redistribution, particularly in the presence of different channels of popular request for...

Motivated by a novel stylized fact - countries with isolated capital cities display worse quality of governance - we provide a framework of endogenous institutional choice based on the idea that elites are constrained by the threat of rebellion, and that this threat is rendered less effective by...