Volatility and Growth: Governments are Key There exists a persistent disagreement in the literature over the effect of business cycles on economic growth. This paper offers a solution to this disagreement, suggesting that volatility carries a positive direct effect, but also a negative indirect effect, operating through the insurance mechanism of government size. Theoretically, the net growth e...

This paper links the share of the population supporting the government to the risk of civil war. We study the question both theoretically and empirically. The theoretical model shows that having a smaller group of individuals control the government has an ambiguous effect on conflict risk: although a smaller group is less able to resist rebellion, its high per capita office rent, cost of regain...

A variety of strategies and programs can be used by local governments to promote distributed solar installation. These programs or goals can be attempted in tandem or in a stepwise fashion. First, a goal for solar should be set to provide an example of solar installation benefits to the community. Then, solar permitting should be improved to allow for less time and money spent in the permitting...

We study the dynamic selection of governments. A government consists of a subset of the individuals in the society. The competence level of the government in o ce determines collective utilities (e.g., by determining the amount and quality of public goods), and each individual derives additional utility from being part of the government (e.g., corruption or rents from holding o ce). We characte...

The 'Race to the Bottom' theory suggests that local governments might be reluctant to adopt policies that are helpful towards poorer citizens out of fear of attracting poorer residents from nearby municipalities. Likewise, policies that are helpful to the poor may be costly and can lead to an increase in taxes that may drive away wealthier residents. Municipalities in which a majority of citize...

We study two governments, each considering whether or not to compete to attract a foreign monopoly Þrm into its own domestic market. The competition, should it occur, would involve offering incentives to the Þrm. The incentives, which are costly for the governments to provide, lower the Þrm’s marginal cost of production. Faced with the offers from each country, the Þrm must choose one of four o...

Using data from national surveys conducted in 2006 and 2011, we examine whether local governments in the United States have adopted eparticipation (a.k.a. e-democracy). The results show that few American local governments have done so. These results are highly inconsistent with the claims of e-democracy advocates. Two important factors account for the lack of edemocracy at the American grassroo...

We construct a simple career concerns model where high-powered incentives can distort the composition of effort by inducing excessive signaling. We show that in the presence of this type of career concerns, markets typically fail to limit competitive pressures and cannot commit to the desirable low-powered incentives. Firmsmay be able to weaken incentives and improve efficiency by obscuring inf...

We used the Fiscal Observatory Survey of the University of Murcia (2007) to examine the antecedents of trust in the Spanish government (at city, regional and state levels). We found that the main drivers of trust are individuals’ perception of the government’s performance and the socio-economic environment in which they live. Regarding the consequences, we tested a variant of the rule complianc...

After months of inaction and neglect from the international community, the Ebola epidemic in west Africa has now spiralled utterly out of control. Today, the virus is a threat not only to the countries where the outbreak has overwhelmed the capacity of national health systems, but also to the entire world. We urge our governments to mobilise all possible resources to assist west Africa in contr...