It is a piece of idle senthentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, or prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application oflegal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in th...

This paper develops a theory of the interaction between appropriative conflict and economic growth. Appropriative conflict, as measured by the diversion of resources, is viewed as the cost of securing effective property rights. We identify conditions under which conflict rises or falls as the rate of economic growth improves. The main implication of the analysis is that if the quality of proper...

Background Despite decades of evidence gathering and calls for action, few countries have systematically attenuated health inequities (HI) through action on the social determinants of health (SDH). This is at least partly because doing so presents a significant political and policy challenge. This paper explores this challenge through a review of the empirical literature, asking: what factors h...

Can rationally ignorant voters and informed politicians lead to persistently inefficient policies in a democracy? A long tradition of thought in political science and economics has answered negatively, due to the averaging out of randomly uninformed voters or persuasion attempts in a competitive setting. Rather, explanations for the persistence of inefficient policies has focused on interest gr...

‘Non-state armed groups’ refers to groups who retain the potential to deploy arms for political, economic and ideological objectives, which in practice are often translated into an open challenge to the authority of the state. In principle, non-state armed groups and political parties/movements are perceived as two opposite models of approach to democratic political processes. However, given th...