The existence in a geographic area of right-to-work laws prohib­iting the union shop tends to generate a labor-market environment with less union power and thus less labor-market pressure to elevate labor costs. To the extent that right-to-work legislation leads to lower labor costs and hence...

This study empirically investigates three hypotheses. The first is that higher levels of economic freedom in an economy promote a higher growth rate of economic activity and hence yield a higher growth rate of per capita real GDP in that economy. The second hypothesis is that higher quality...

This study employs the instrumental variable two-stage least squares regression approach for the data for 121 countries to explore the impact of a country’s political environment on its level of corruption. The study provides strong evidence that a higher degree of rule of law, press freedom,...

Adolf Hitler's seizure of power was one of the most consequential events of the twentieth century. Yet, our understanding of which factors fueled the astonishing rise of the Nazis remains highly incomplete. This paper shows that religion played an important role in the Nazi party's electoral...

The free flow of global capital has resulted in destabilizing financial crises, coupled with significant redistributive effects. However, the existing literature has not adequately addressed the channels for this redistribution, nor the different factors that influence the formation of...

With heterogeneous productivity and sticky prices in the short run, exchange rate changes can generate real effects on agents in the economy; the result is that the currency regime becomes a policy variable amenable to political competition. This paper discusses how special interests and...

Governments sometimes promote rules backed by sanctions too weak to make obedience privately optimal. Factors that may help make such rules effective include the presence of informal sanctions by peers, and implementation through voting. I study the impact of non-deterrent formal sanctions on...

Several scholars have argued that abundant natural resources can be harmful to economic performance under bad institutions and helpful when institutions are good. These arguments have either been theoretical or based on naturally-occurring variation in natural resource wealth. We test this...

Assuming that instructors of economics are utility maximizers, they may find it useful to engage in classroom behavior that is likely to generate favorable outcomes with respect to student course evaluations. This is especially true if student course evaluations are used in assessing teaching...

This study visits the role of shareholder proposals in the governance of public corporations by studying withdrawn shareholder proposals. Among all shareholders, unions are the most likely to withdraw proposals. Furthermore, firms with a record of poor performance, lower insider ownership and...