We investigate whether aid contributed to institutional development in transition economies. We find that aid flows have a positive effect on democratization, especially on constraints on the executive and political participation. At the same time, total aid has no effect on overall quality of...

In the closing decades of the twentieth century there has been an almost complete intellectual triumph of the twin principles of marketization (understood here as referring to the liberalization of domestic markets and freer international mobility of goods, services, financial capital and...

Processes of transition to democracy and country break up stand out as ideal experiments to estimate the impact of wide institutional reform on well-being. Changes in population heights are regarded as virtuous pointers of well-being improvements in psycho-social environments, which improve with...

One of the key goals of political economy is to understand how institutional arrangements shape policy outcomes. This paper studies a comparatively neglected aspect of this - the forces that shape heterogeneous performance of autocracies. The paper develops a simple theoretical model of...

The determinants of government responsiveness to its citizens is a key issue in political economy. Here we develop a model based on the solution of political agency problems. Having a more informed an politically active electorate strengthens incentives for governments to be responsive. This...

While it is generally recognized that electoral competition can have a major influence on public spending decisions, there has been little effort to consider whether the move to multiparty elections in African countries in recent years has led to a redistribution of public expenditures between...

This paper makes two empirical contributions to the literature, based on predictions generated by a lobby group model. First, we investigate how environmental lobby groups affect the determination of environmental policy in rich and developing countries. Second, we explore the interaction...

Processes of transition to democracy and country break up stand out as ideal experiments to estimate the impact of wide institutional reform on well-being. Changes in population heights are regarded as virtuous pointers of well-being improvements in psycho-social environments, which improve with...

We study the health effects of the spread of democratic institutions and the extension of voting rights in 15 European countries since the middle of the nineteenth century. We employ both cross country and cohort variation in heights and employ a new instrument for democracy and the extension of...