The neoclassical economists have long used the concept of «market failure» as a stick with which to beat up on free enterprise system. Foremost amongst these so called failures» are «negative externalities.» These defined action that negatively affects third parties, other than via price. key example is pollution. dismal scientists never mention, however, fact government itself source negative ...

In this paper we study dollarization as a commitment device that the Central Bank could use to avoid getting involved in an undesirable banking-sector bailout. We show how a political process could induce an equilibrium outcome that differs from the one that a benevolent Central Bank would want to implement. Dollarization then could be used to restore the economy to the benevolent outcome. In s...

This paper discusses the political economy behind the principal trade policy decisions in Russia since independence. I discuss why export restraints were widely employed in the early transition years and why the export quotas proved more difficult to remove than anticipated. Why it was so difficult to resolve the monetary basis for the collapse in trade among the newly independent states. Why t...

BACKGROUND We previously reported that the Q5 gene product (Q5 antigen) was expressed on the surface of various tumor cells derived from H-2k (Qa-2-) mice. The Q5 antigen has tumor-protective antigenicity in the syngeneic mice. MATERIALS AND METHODS Transcripts of the Qa region genes were analyzed by the RT-PCR method. Cell fractionation was performed with the MACS method and the phenotypes w...

The Redistributive Effects of Political Reservation for Minorities: Evidence from India We examine the impact of political reservation for disadvantaged minority groups on poverty. To address the concern that political reservation is endogenous in the relationship between poverty and reservation, we take advantage of the state-time variation in reservation in state legislative assemblies in Ind...

To study whether foreign aid fuels personal, regional and ethnic favoritism, we use satellite data on nighttime light for any region in any aid-recipient country, and we determine for each year and each country the region in which the current political leader was born. Having a panel with 22,850 regions in 91 aid recipient countries with yearly observations from 1992 to 2005, we compare the eff...

This paper analyses the dynamics of inequality, democratization and economic development in a political economy model of growth where education is both the engine of growth and a determinant of political participation. In a context with imperfect capital markets, we investigate the incentives for an educated oligarchy to subsidize the poor’s education and to initiate a democratic transition. We...

Using the most comprehensive developing country dataset ever compiled on air and water pollution and environmental regulations, the paper assesses India’s environmental regulations with a difference-in-differences design. The air pollution regulations are associated with substantial improvements in air quality. The most successful air regulation resulted in a modest, but statistically insignifi...

The majority of African countries implemented import liberalisation in the 1990s. This paper explores factors that may explain the pattern of protection and of tariff reform. We consider political economy explanations, motivated specifically by the Grossman and Helpman (1994) model of protection in response to industry lobbies, and the possibility that reforms are technocratic. Using industry-l...

The paper provides policymakers and regulators with an overview of the more relevant theoretical issues related to the pricing of access to ensure that the political debate around practical concerns is solidly grounded. The paper discusses in detail the importance of access pricing in the context of: 1) a liberalized and vertically separated industry, 2) liberalized but vertically integrated in...