Commentary on the Limits of Compensation and Deterrence in Legal Remedies

Allen comments on papers written by James Cox and Deborah DeMott regarding the deterrence of corporate misconduct. He examines the limits of compensation and deterrence as legal remedies

Ghana and the Ideal of the Citizen-Shareholder: A Corporate-Law Response to the Resource Curse

This Note assesses Ghana’s legal regime for managing revenues from its newfound petroleum reserves as a means of combatting the resource curse—the well-documented political and economic phenomenon wherein resource-rich countries experience greater levels of corruption and poor governance and weaker democracy and economic growth than resource-poor nations. The Ghanaian regime fails to provide systemic protections against the resource curse by (1) supplying insufficient economic development and poverty relief, (2) lacking incentives and mechanisms for overseeing and holding accountable the powers responsible for managing petroleum revenues, and (3) providing insufficient channels for spreading the economic benefits of extraction beyond the petroleum sector. This Note undertakes a comparative study of a representative group of petroleum revenue-management regimes—those of Alaska, Norway, Indonesia, and Trinidad and Tobago—in search of an effective regime that might be transplanted to Ghana. Finding that none of these regimes are adequately applicable to Ghana’s economic, social, or political context, this Note goes on to propose a novel regime for petroleum revenue management in Ghana, drawing on principles of U.S. corporate law

Beyond divide and rule: weak dictators, natural resources and civil conflict

We propose a model where an autocrat rules over an ethnically divided society. The dictator selects the tax rate over domestic production and the nation's natural resources to maximize his rents under the threat of a regime-switching revolution. We show that a weak ruler may let the country plunge in civil war to increase his personal rents. Inter-group fighting weakens potential opposition to the ruler, thereby allowing him to increase fiscal pressure. We show that the presence of natural resources exacerbatesthe incentives of the ruler to promote civil conflict for his own profit, especially if the resources are unequally distributed across ethnic groups. We validate the main predictions of the model using cross-country data over the period 1960-2007, and show that our empirical results are not likely to be driven by omitted observable determinants of civil war incidence or by unobservable country-specific heterogeneity.

Beyond Divide-and-Rule: Sparking Civil War to Hold on Power

We propose a model where an autocrat rules over an ethnically divided society. The dictator carefully selects the tax rate over the subjects' production and the nation's natural resources to maximize his rent under the threat of a revolution. We show that it may be in the interest of a weak ruler to foster civil strife to enhance his taxing capacity. By exacerbating existing group antagonisms the leader weakens potential opposition, thereby allowing him to increase fiscal pressure. Important stocks of natural resources and an unequal distribution of these resources across ethnic groups makes this strategy more profitable for the ruler.Autocracy, Divide-and-Rule

How Do People Evaluate Foreign Aid To ‘Nasty’ Regimes?

Recent theories of foreign aid assume that moral motives drive voters’ preferences about foreign aid. However, little is known about how moral concerns interact with the widely accepted instrumental goals that aid serves. Moreover, what effects does this interplay have on preferences over policy actions? This article assesses these questions using a survey experiment in which respondents evaluate foreign aid policies toward nasty recipient regimes (those that violate human rights, rig elections, crack down on media, etc.). The results indicate that the public does have a strong aversion to providing aid to nasty recipient regimes, but that it also appreciates the instrumental benefits that aid helps acquire. Contrary to a mainstay assertion in the literature, the study finds that moral aversion can largely be reversed if the donor government engages more with the nasty country. These findings call into question the micro-foundations of recent theories of foreign aid, and produce several implications for the aid literature

Design Deficiencies and Lost Votes

In 2010, tens of thousands of votes in New York did not count due to overvotes -- the invalid selection of more than one candidate. This report demonstrates how the lack of adequate overvote protections disproportionately affected the state's poorest communities, suggests commonsense reforms, and examines national implications