The paper develops a theoretical rationale for a non-linear relationship between the level of democracy and government spending. A model is presented showing why and how political participation influences the spending behavior of opportunistic governments that can choose an optimal combination...

The recent surge in studies analysing spatial dependence in political science has gone hand-in-hand with increased attention paid to the choice of estimation technique. In comparison, specification choice has been relatively neglected, even though it leads to equally, if not more, serious...

Summary Famine mortality is preventable by government action and yet some famines kill. We develop a political theory of famine mortality based on the selectorate theory of Bueno de Mesquita et al. [Bueno de Mesquita, B. B., Morrow, J. M., Siverson, R. M., & Smith, A. (2002). Political...

The introduction of the Euro has considerably affected the de facto monetary policy autonomy – defined as statistical independence from monetary policy in the key currency areas – in countries outside the European Currency Union. Using a standard open economy framework we argue that de facto...