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SSRN Research Paper Series
The Social Science Research Network’s Research Paper Series includes working papers produced by Stanford GSB the Rock Center.
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Classic arguments for decentralization, augmented by ideas about how participation empowers the poor, motivate the widely used approach in foreign aid called community-driven development. CDD devolves control over the selection…
American politics overrepresents the wealthy. But what policies do the wealthy support? Many accounts implicitly assume the wealthy are monolithically conservative and that increases in their political power will increase…
This paper studies the welfare effects of a partial banking union in which cross-country financial transfers that could be used towards bailouts are decided at the supranational level, but policymakers in member countries hold…
I examine the conditions under which trade can support peaceful coexistence and prosperity when particular ethnic groups are cheap targets of violence. A simple theoretical framework reveals that for a broad set of cases, while…
Politicians are widely perceived to lose significance upon leaving office. Yet media accounts often highlight politicians’ legacies as a source of influence that endures even after they retire. This article assesses these…
Leading research is converging upon the finding that citizens from immigrant-receiving nations strongly prefer the entry of high-skilled to low-skilled immigrants. Prior studies have largely interpreted this “skill premium” as…
How natural disasters affect politics in developing countries is an important question, given the fragility of fledgling democratic institutions in some of these countries as well as likely increased exposure to natural disasters…
We analyze a model of policymaking in which only one actor, e.g., a bureaucratic agency or a well-funded interest group, has the capacity to develop high-quality policy proposals. By virtue of her skills, this actor has an…
We analyze the classic problem of sustaining trust when cheating and leaving trading partners is easy, and outside enforcement is difficult. We construct equilibria where individuals are loyal to smaller groups– communities– that…
Political institutions often use decision making procedures that create veto players—individuals or groups who, despite lacking direct decision making authority, nevertheless have the power to block policy change. In this paper we…
We present a theory of dynamic coalitions for a legislative bargaining game in which policies continue in effect in the absence of new legislation. We characterize Markov perfect equilibria with dynamic coalitions, which are…
I develop a simple hold-up model of political risk, which can be used to explore firms’ strategic options when their investments are subject to the threat of government expropriation. In the model, a firm decides whether to invest…
Two key features of the government bailout programs implemented in the 2008- 2009 financial crisis were: first, the general opposition of voters to these programs and second, the implementation of a variety of interventions…
Many lament that weak accountability and poor governance impede economic development in Africa. Politicians rely on ethnic allegiances that deliver the vote irrespective of performance, dampening electoral incentives. Giving…
An emergent theme in the study of organizations is the broad differences in managerial practice and performance across firms. We develop an explanation for these phenomena that turns on the complexity of the environments that…
The policy choices of governments are frequently durable. From the building of bridges to the creation of social programs, investments in public infrastructure typically last well beyond a single electoral cycle. In this paper we…
Although doctors and hospitals own their patients’ medical records, state and federal laws require that they provide patients with a copy at “reasonable cost.” We examine the effects of state laws that cap the fees that doctors…
This paper examines the optimal degree of centralization that can be achieved with respect to bailout policies when a central authority cannot supervise the entire banking system of the economy. Part of the banking system is…
I study public liquidity provision in a liquidity-constrained economy in which government policy is decided by politicians subject to rent-seeking and electoral constraints. Public interventions are modeled as a choice between…
How do political predispositions shape the social relationships individuals create? To address these issues, we leverage the domain of online dating, in which we can observe people’s political identities and preferences before…