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Research
papers
In Dissecting the
Sinews of Power: International Trade and
the Rise of Britain’s Fiscal-Military State, 1689-1823 (2022; with Karolina Hutková, Lukas Leucht, and
Noam Yuchtman) we establish a novel historical fact using previously
unexploited archival data. The development of Imperial Britain’s
fiscal-military state from the late 17th through the early 19th century
relied, to a large and growing extent, on the extraction of tax revenues
from trade. This overturns an existing literature – most notably,
Brewer’s Sinews of Power (1989) – which argues that fiscal
development in Britain was primarily a result of domestic taxation. This
fact has profound implications for our understanding of the institutional
basis of Britain’s development (and thus the emergence of modern growth). While
the conventional wisdom considers domestic institutions and domestic
economic activity in Britain to be the primary drivers, our evidence
suggests an important role for trade, and therefore mercantilism
and empire. PDF Paper
In Economic And
Social Outsiders But Political Insiders: Sweden's Radical Right (forthcoming Review
of Economic Studies, with Fred Finan,
Olle Folke, Torsten Persson and Johanna Rickne), we study the individual
characteristics of radical-right politicians. Two policy and economic
shocks in the 2000s increased the demand and supply of radical-right
politicians, who appear to be citizen-candidates representing those who
were hurt by the shocks. The new political entrants make representation
more “descriptive”–the radical-right politicians share the socioeconomic
traits of those hurt by the shocks—, but also less valence-oriented. A
tradeoff arises between descriptive representation and leadership
competence, and dilutes the “inclusive meritocracy” profile of the Swedish
political class we had characterized in earlier work. PDF Paper
Supplementary
appendix
In The
Paradox of Civilization. Pre-Institutional Sources of Security and
Prosperity (2022; American
Political Science Review; with Pablo Hernández
and Sebastián Mazzuca), we
analyze the puzzle of civilization – civilization requires prosperity but
prosperity attracts predation, which discourages the investments that
deliver prosperity. We emphasize aspects of the geographic and strategic
environment that affect productive and defense capabilities, to study how
civilization can emerge and why when it does it combines prosperity with
another innovation: the state. We apply the model to explain the rise of
the first two civilizations in Sumer and Egypt. PDF Paper
Related Vox article
In Information Technology and Government Decentralization:
Experimental Evidence From Paraguay (2021; Econometrica, with Fred Finan, Nicholas Li, and Laura Schechter), we estimate
the value of disperse information in an organization. The context is the
adoption by a government principal of a new monitoring technology over
agents; a novel experimental design and a model allow us to estimate
marginal treatment effects at different scales of rollout, and assess the
value of decentralization under various counterfactual scenarios. PDF
In Progress and Perspectives in the Study of
Political Selection (2018; Annual Review of Economics,
with Fred Finan) we offer a
review othe literature on political selection
guided by a simple model of self-selection by candidates with potentially
different qualities in a probabilistic voting world. PDF
In The Demand for
Bad Policy When Voters Underappreciate Equilibrium Effects (2018; Review of Economic Studies,
with Pedro Dal Bó
and Erik Eyster),
we show experimentally that groups can fail to resolve social dilemmas
through democratic means due to their inability to anticipate the
equilibrium effects of new policies or institutions. PDF
Online Appendix
In Who Becomes a
Politician? (2017; Quarterly
Journal of Economics, with Fred Finan,
Olle Folke, Torsten Persson and Johanna Rickne), we describe fundamental
patterns of political selection in an advanced democracy (Sweden) and
document various new facts. These imply that representative democracy can
produce an “inclusive meritocracy,” whereby political leadership is highly
competent relative to the population, as well as representative of the
various socioeconomic backgrounds in society. PDF
Related Vox article
In The Economics of
Faith: Using an Apocalyptic Prophecy to Elicit Religious Beliefs in the
Field (Journal of Public
Economics 141, 2016, with Ned Augenblick,
Jesse Cunha, and Justin Rao), we overcome important
difficulties in the identification of religious beliefs - we offer a model of faith as a “demand
for beliefs,” and measure it through a field experiment on time preference
with a group holding apocalyptic beliefs. PDF
In “Do the Right
Thing:” The Effects of Moral Suasion on Cooperation, (2014, Journal
of Public Economics
117, with Pedro Dal Bó), we study experimentally whether and
how moral appeals can help sustain cooperation. Moral appeals cause a transitory increase in cooperation in basic
public good games, but moral appeals have persistent effects in the
presence of punishment instruments. We find that moral suasion works both
through expectation and preference-shifting effects. Expectation effects
imply the presence of a “social moral amplifier.” PDF
In Strengthening
State Capabilities: The Role of Financial Incentives in the Call to Public
Service, (Quarterly Journal of
Economics 128(3), August 2013, with Fred Finan and
Martín Rossi) we report on a recruitment
drive in Mexico’s federal government which included exogenous variation of
wage postings and job characteristics. We document the anatomy of the
applicant pool along many dimensions including previous earnings, cognitive
skills, personality traits, and motivation, we estimate the impact of
higher wages on the quality and size of the applicant pool and the ability
of the recruiter to fill vacancies, yielding the first experimental
estimate of the elasticity of the labor supply facing the firm. We also
estimate the effect on job acceptance rates of various characteristics of
the job, including distance to the job and the job environment. PDF paper
Online
Appendix
In Self-Esteem, Moral Capital, and Wrongdoing, (Journal of the European Economic
Association 11(3), June 2013, with Marko Terviö), we develop an infinite horizon,
single-self, model of endogenous moral standards featuring self-reinforcing
patterns of virtue and corruption. We develop applications to study why
morally weaker types may self-select into high temptation activities (e.g.,
politics), and how optimal extrinsic deterrence schemes may change once
endogenous intrinsic motivation is considered. We also use the model to
study the dynamics of beliefs about self (“moral capital”) and wrongdoing
in a population in demographic steady state. PDF
In Conflict and
Policy in General Equilibrium: Insights from a Standard Trade Model
(2012, Chapter 25 in the Oxford
Handbook of the Economics of Peace and Conflict, with Pedro Dal Bó)
we revisit the “Workers, Warriors and
Criminals” framework of conflict in a small open economy to derive
novel results and rank policy responses. PDF
In Term Length
and The Effort of Politicians, (Review of Economic Studies
78(4), October 2011, with Martín Rossi) we exploit two natural
experiments in the Argentine legislature to assess the causal effect of
term length on various measures of legislative effort by politicians. PDF
In Workers, Warriors and Criminals: Social Conflict
in General Equilibrium, (Journal of the European Economic
Association 9(4),
August 2011, with Pedro Dal Bó)
we study social conflict in its connection to the appropriation of
resources. We show that not every wealth-increasing shock (or policy) will
reduce conflict. What is critical is the factor intensity of the industry
initially affected. The model integrates the effects of income shocks on
the opportunity costs and predatory incentives involved in conflict, to
explain empirical patterns of crime and civil war. The model accounts for
various populist and redistributive policies, and for resistance to reform.
PDF
In A Model of Spoils Politics, (American Journal of
Political Science
53(1), January 2009, with Robert Powell), we study spoils politics
as a coercive signaling game where an informed party seeks to co-opt a
challenger and study conditions leading to inefficient conflict and to the
endogenous resolution of the asymmetric information that causes conflict. PDF
In Political Dynasties, (Review of Economic
Studies 76(1), January 2009, with Pedro Dal Bó
and Jason Snyder), we study political
dynasties in the US Congress since 1789. We document various facts in
connection with the historical evolution of dynasties and the profile of
dynastic politicians. We also study the self-perpetuation of political
elites and analyze the connection between political competition and the
prevalence of dynastic politicians. PDF
In Reputation When Threats and Transfers Are
Available, (Journal of Economics & Management Strategy,
16(3), Fall 2007, with Pedro Dal Bó
and Rafael Di Tella),
we study how pressure groups and extorters may combine threats and payments
(offers or requests) to influence targets, while threats become
endogenously credible. Transfers allow the long-lived player to benefit
from reputation even in arbitrarily short repeated games and under low
priors on his being tough. PDF
(This and the following article are an electronic
version of articles published in the American Journal of Political Science,
and the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy. Complete
citation information for the final version of each paper, as published in
the print edition, is available on the Blackwell Synergy online delivery
service, accessible via the journals website at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com.)
In Bribing Voters, (American Journal of
Political Science 51(4), October 2007), I study the optimal ways to
influence voting decisions. I derive implications for influence over
legislatures and boards, and analyze when voting should be made secret. PDF
paper Extension with expressive voters under uncertainty
In Bribes,
Punishment, and Judicial Immunity (2007, in Transparency
International’s Global Corruption Report, with Pedro Dal Bó
and Rafael Di Tella)
we revisit the theoretical links between violence, corruption, and the
quality of public officials established in our “Plata o Plomo?” framework, and
document the cross-country empirical association between conflict, law and
order, corruption, and bureaucratic quality. PDF.
In Corruption and Inefficiency: Theory and Evidence
from Electric Utilities, (Journal of Public Economics
91(5-6), June 2007, with Martín Rossi) we find that corruption in
the country is strongly associated with higher inefficiency of firms, even
when controlling by regulatory regime, ownership type, and other important
forces varying by country and time. PDF
In Regulatory Capture: A Review, (Oxford
Review of Economic Policy 22, August 2006), I provide an overview
of theories and evidence of regulatory capture. PDF
(© 2006 by Oxford University Press)
In Committees With Supermajority Voting Yield
Commitment With Flexibility, (Journal of Public Economics 90(4),
May 2006), I show that in the presence of dynamic inconsistency a committee
deciding under a supermajority voting rule will optimally balance
commitment and flexibility. PDF
In “Plata o Plomo?”: Bribe
and Punishment in a Theory of Political Influence, (American
Political Science Review 100(1), February 2006, with Pedro Dal Bó
and Rafael Di Tella)
we show that factors causing more state capture tend to worsen the quality
of politicians, and we show how legal immunity can decrease official
corruption and increase the quality of politicians. PDF
(© 2006 by Cambridge University Press)
In Capture by Threat, (Journal of Political
Economy 111(5), October 2003, with Rafael Di Tella)
we study coercive influence by a special interest. The coercive nature of
influence makes the efforts of a defending agent (the political party) only
mitigating. Thus, under otherwise symmetric pressures and even when having
a strict preference for doing the right thing, a political authority yields
to socially suboptimal interest group influence with positive probability.
In addition, factors that enhance capture by threat worsen the quality of
politicians.
PDF (©
2003 by The University of Chicago)
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