This paper explores the effect of political accountability on the size of the public sector in a principal-agent model of democratic government. Political accountability is the degree to which the electorate can control politicians through elections, and emphasis is put on the roles of...

The purpose of the paper is to show that the nature of the relationship between governance and democracy varies depending on how the two terms (of a political discourse) are defined, that when the definition of one term encompasses distinctive features of the other we find that governance and...

Persson and Tabellini (2003) show that presidential regimes and majoritarian election systems have important effects on fiscal policy, government effectiveness and productivity. Here, their dataset is extended in a number of ways: the number of countries included is increased from 85 to up to...

Popular protests and palace coups are the two domestic threats to dictators. We show that free media, which informs citizens about their rulers, is a double-edged sword that alleviates one threat, but exacerbates the other. Informed citizens may protest against a ruler, but they may also protest...

How should sovereign bailouts take account of the effects bailouts have on policy reforms? Conflicted recipient governments complicate bailout choices because some reforms that spur growth reduce rents that benefit government decision makers. Our model takes account of whether bailout generosity...