Many believe that deliberative democracy, where individuals discuss alternatives before voting on them, should result in collectively superior outcomes because voters become better informed and decisions are justified using reason. These deliberations typically involve a moderator, however,...

Do regional hegemons use their power in regional organizations to advance foreign policy objectives? The authors investigate whether Japan leverages its privileged position at the Asian Development Bank (aDb) to facilitate project loans for the elected Asian members of the United Nations...

There are many stories of democracy but little consensus over which variables robustly determine its emergence and survival. We apply extreme bounds analysis to test the robustness of 59 factors proposed in the literature, evaluating over 3 million regressions. The most robust determinants of...

Does the cost of calling someone across a border depend on political institutions? We argue that, compared to autocracies, democratic governments have stronger incentives to regulate the provision of telephone service efficiently. In contrast, autocracies have incentives to limit communication...

We model an urban labour market in a developing economy, incorporating workers' risk attitudes. Trade-offs between risk aversion and ability determine worker allocation across formal and informal wage employment, and voluntary and involuntary self employment. Greater risk of informal wage...

Twenty years of negotiations over reform of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) are yet to bear fruit. We use recent advances in the theory of a-priori voting power to present a formal quantitative appraisal of the structural reforms contained within eleven current reform proposals, and...

Tax authorities worldwide are implementing voluntary disclosure schemes to recover tax on offshore investments. Such schemes are typically designed retrospectively following the bulk acquisition of information on offshore holdings, such as the recent "Paradise" and "Panama" papers. They offer an...