This paper challenges the commonly held view that Smith's moral theory is a subjectivist theory. Smith's test for goodness and rightness - for propriety - is not the approbation of an impartial spectator, but the warranted approbation of such a spectator. Something is right or good not because...

Are democracies better at winning wars and militarized disputes? Is there an advantage associated with initiating a war or dispute? Noting that pairwise contest data are the norm in applied research, we motivate a straightforward Bradley–Terry statistical model for these problems from...

We offer an institutional explanation for the dramatic decline in corrupt practices that characterizes British political development in the mass suffrage era. Parliamentary candidates who faced corruption charges were judged by tribunals of sitting MPs until 1868, when this responsibility was...

We estimate the parameters of a reputational game of political competition using data from five two-party parliamentary systems. We find that latent party preferences (and party reputations) persist with high probability across election periods, with one exception: parties with extreme...