We study the nature of regional inequality in Colombia over the past 200 years. The main empirical fact is that regional inequality has been highly persistent despite the large changes that have taken place and the modernization of the society. We show that regional inequality is highly correlated with significant within-country differences in economic and political institutions, which are them...

How do domestic political institutions affect the outcomes of international trade negotiations? Specifically, are the aggregate trade barriers agreed upon by a democratic pair lower than those by a pair composed of a democracy and an autocracy? I revisit these important questions by highlighting some problematic aspect of the analysis by Mansfield, Milner, and Rosendorff (2000). Contrary to the...

This Web Appendix contains supplemental materials. In Section A1, we investigate timevarying effects of each “gravity” and Polity IV component variable. Consistent with our findings in the main text, we find that economic “gravity” variables have similar effects on both extensive and intensive margins, while political institutions matter differently on the two margins. We also find that politic...

From the early days of mankind, the problem of collective decision making in a society where information is dispersed among the members of the society has been a challenging one. Many civilizations have perished, or more recently, governments have taken a downturn due to bad, uninformed policies. Numerous other social, political and economical decisions ranging from voting for political represe...

This chapter surveys the new institutional economics, a rapidly growing literature combining economics, law, organization theory, political science, sociology and anthropology to understand social, political and commercial institutions. This literature tries to explain what institutions are, how they arise, what purposes they serve, how they change and how they may be reformed. Following conven...

This paper studies the political economy of fertility. Specifically, I argue that fertility may be a strategic choice for ethnic groups engaged in redistributive conflict. I first present a simple conflict model where high fertility is optimal for each ethnic group if and only if the economy’s ethnic diversity is high and/or institutions are weak. I then test the model in a cross-national datas...

We examine the effect of fiscal policy on sovereign risk spreads and investigate whether the interaction of fiscal variables with political institutions affect financial markets. Using panel data from emerging market countries, we find that revenue-based adjustment lowers spreads more than spending-based adjustment. Financial markets also react to the composition of spending. Cuts in current sp...

This article examines recent and potential reforms in India’s fiscal federal system. We summarize key federal institutions in India, including tax and expenditure assignments, and mechanisms for Center-state transfers. We discuss the institutional process by which reforms can and do take place, including the role of academics, political influences, and especially institutions such as the Financ...

In a polarized political setting, public policy evolves in response to pressures on and from institutions. These institutions include broad social structures, formal organizations (such as regulatory agencies), and support systems (like civil service). This study uses water and sanitation policies in Bolivia to illustrate how institutional reform at all three levels lacked legitimacy in the eye...

Research on e-government typically focuses on disruptive technologies and their presumed transformational effects on government.The internet and associated technologies are more than two decades old, and even cursory observation demonstrates that institutional change in government is often painstakingly slow. To theorize longer-term developments in e-government, an institutional perspective on ...