From Open to Secret Ballot: Vote Buying and Modernization

The secret ballot is one of the cornerstones of democracy. We contend that the historical process of modernization caused the switch from open to secret ballot with the underlying mechanism being that income growth, urbanization, and rising education standards undermined vote markets and made electoral corruption uneconomical. We undertake event history studies of ballot reform in Western Europe and the Americas during the 19th and 20th centuries to establish that modernization was systematically related to ballot reform. We study electoral turnout before and after ballot reform amongst the US states and British parliamentary constituencies to substantiate the hypothesis that modernization made vote buying uneconomical

Distributive Politics and Electoral Incentives: Evidence from Seven US State Legislatures

We study the effect of electoral incentives on the allocation of public services across legislative districts. We develop a model in which elections encourage individual legislators to cater to parochial interests and thus aggravate the common pool problem. Using unique data from seven US states, we study how the amount of funding that a legislator channels to his district changes when he faces a term limit. We find that legislators bring less state funds to their district when they cannot run for re-election. Consistent with the Law of 1/N, this tendency is less pronounced in states with many legislative districts

Corruption and Sustainable Development

This paper studies the relationship between corruption and sustainable development in a sample of 110 countries between 1996 and 2007. Sustainability is measured by growth in genuine wealth per capita. The empirical analysis consistently finds that cross-national measures of perceived and experienced corruption reduce growth in genuine wealth per capita. In contrast to the evidence on the relationship between corruption and growth in GDP per capita, the negative correlation between a wide range of different corruption indices and growth in genuine wealth per capita is very robust and is of economic as well as of statistical significance. We relate the finding to the literature on the resource curse and demonstrate that rampant corruption can put an economy on an unsustainable path along which its capital base is being eroded.Corruption, sustainable development, resource curse, cross-country analysis

Do Autocratic States Trade Less?

The paper analyzes whether the political regime of a country inuences its involvement in international trade. Firstly, we develop a theoretical model that predicts that autocracies trade less than democracies. Secondly, we test the predictions of the model empirically using a panel of more than 130 countries for the years 1962 to 2000. In contrast to the existing literature, we use data on individual importing and exporting countries, rather than a dyadic set-up. In line with the model, we and that autocracies import substantially less than democracies, even after controlling for official trade policies. This finding is very stable and does not depend on a particular set-up or estimation technique.International trade; democracy; autocracy; gravity model.

A Theory of the Corrupt Keynesian

We evaluate the impact of real business cycle shocks on corruption and economic policy in a model of entry regulation in a representative democracy. We .nd that corruption is procyclical and regulation policy is counter-cyclical. Corrupt politicians engage in excessive stabilization of aggregate fluctuations and behave as if they were Keynesian. We also find that business cycle shocks can induce political instability with politicians losing office in recessions.Corruption; entry regulation; performance voting; business cycles.

Strategic Consensus

We study equilibrium retention rules in a dynamic common agency game. The decision to reappoint or not is made by a committee consisting of two principals: the retention decision is uncertain if the two principals disagree. We demonstrate that all equilibrium paths exhibit what we call strategic consensus: the agent takes actions that satisfy the performance standards of all principals on the one hand, and all principals lower their standards such that the agent wants to satisfy them on the other. This result applies both to economies with sub- and super-additive costs of providing utilities to the principals.Common agency, retention rules and uncertainty.

One Cheer for Foreign Lobbying

This paper presents an argument in favor of foreign lobbying. We show how foreign lobbying can help internalize cross national externalities and promote social objectives.Foreign lobbying; common agency; campaign contributions; cross national externalities.

Give and Take: Political Competition, Participation and Public Finance in 20th Century Latin America

Rational choice models predict that political competition and political participation have opposite effects on the size of government. We investigate these theories using data from a panel of 18 Latin American countries during the 20th century. Our research builds evidence for the prediction that reforms enhancing political competition tend to limit the size of government, while reforms increasing political participation tend to increase the size of government. Furthermore, we find that reforms which remove literacy requirements from franchise laws are associated with governmental expansion, while changes in women.s su¤rage laws have no impact on the size of government. Our findings demonstrate the empirical relevance of the distinction between political competition and participation.Political competition, political participation, the extension of the franchise, women.s su¤rage, literacy requirements; size of government; school enrollment.

Distributive Politics and Electoral Incentives: Evidence from Seven US State Legislatures

We study the effect of electoral incentives on the allocation of public services across legislative districts. We develop a model in which elections encourage individual legislators to cater to parochial interests and thus aggravate the common pool problem. Using unique data from seven US states, we study how the amount of funding that a legislator channels to his district changes when he faces a term limit. We find that legislators bring less state funds to their district when they cannot run for re-election. Consistent with the Law of 1/N, this tendency is less pronounced in states with many legislative districts.

Electoral Uncertainty and Public Goods

This paper argues that uncertain or random voter turnout plays a key role in mediating conflicts of interest between voters and politicians on the one hand and heterogenous groups of voters on the other. Random voter turnout creates an incentive for politicians to seek con- sensus because it is unclear ex ante who will hold the majority among those who turn out to vote. We argue that this leads to efficient provision of public goods and that it protects minority groups against the tyranny of the majority. We also argue that compulsory voting may not be desirable because it reduces randomness in turnouts.Political Agency, Performance Voting, Turnout Uncertainty, Public Finance