Publications

Working Paper
J. Stephen Ferris, Stanley L. Winer, and Bernard Grofman. Working Paper. “"The Duverger-Demsetz Perspective on Electoral Competitiveness and Fragmentation: With Application to the Canadian Parliamentary System, 1867-2011”. ferrisetal2016.pdf
Arthur Silve and Thierry Verdier. Working Paper. “The Dynastic Transmission of Power, Exit Options and the Coevolution of Rent-Seeking Elites”.Abstract
We introduce a dynamic model that investigates the persistence and evolution of elite-dominated societies, where inherited political capital determines one’s social standing. Our analysis highlights the critical role of the distribution of exit options in the evolution of political inclusiveness across generations. An elite comparatively more mobile than the masses generally entrenches a politically stratified society, whereas a more widespread distribution of exit options can encourage inclusiveness. Under certain conditions differential mobility may still induce political inclusiveness across generations. Exit options across different political entities lead to a joint evolution of local power structures.
silveverdier_power.pdf
Working Paper. Early Marriages in Middle East and North Africa. Initiative on VAW, Carr Center, Harvard Kennedy School.Abstract

"Child marriage remains a widely ignored violation of the health and development rights of girls and young women” (IPPF, 2006). Many reasons are given by parents and guardians to justify child marriage.  Economic reasons often underpin these decisions which are directly linked to poverty and the lack of economic opportunities for girls in rural areas. Girls are either seen as an economic burden or valued as capital for their exchange value in terms of goods, money or livestock. A combination of cultural, traditional, and religious arguments are examples utilized to justify child marriage. The fear and stigma attached to premarital sex and bearing children outside marriage, and the associated family “honor,” are often seen as valid reasons for the actions that families take. Finally, many parents tend to curtail the education of their girls and marry them off, due to fear of the high level of sexual violence and abuse encountered en route to, and even at, school.

earlymarriagemiddleeastnafrica.pdf
Lee Alston and Bernardo Mueller. Working Paper. “"Economic Backwardness and Catching Up: Brazilian Agriculture, 1964-2014"”.Abstract

No abstract available.

alstonmueller2015.pdf
Douglas A. Irwin and Maksym G. Chepeliev. Working Paper. “The Economic Consequences of Sir Robert Peel: A Quantitative Assessment of the Repeal of the Corn Laws”.Abstract
Britain’s repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was the signature trade policy event of the nineteenth century. This paper provides a quantitative general equilibrium evaluation of the repeal on sectoral output and employment, factor prices and income distribution, international trade and the terms of trade, and economic welfare based on a detailed input-output matrix of the British economy in 1841. We find that the repeal left Britain’s overall welfare roughly unchanged, or perhaps negligibly (0.1 percent) lower, as the static efficiency gains are offset by the adverse terms-of-trade effects of the tariff reduction. Labor and capital gained a slight amount of income at the expense of landowners (whose income fell about 3-5 percent). Combining the changes in factor payments with different consumption patterns across income groups, we find that the top 10 percent of income earners lose while the bottom 90 percent of income earners, who spent a disproportionate amount of their income on food, gain. To assess whether the model yields reasonable results, we compare the model’s output, price, and trade predictions with the actual ex post outcomes.
irwin_on_corn_laws.pdf
Vincenzo Galasso and Salvatore Nunnari. Working Paper. “The Economic Effects of Electoral Rules: Evidence from Unemployment Benefits”.Abstract
This paper provides a novel test of the link from electoral rules to economic policies. We focus on unemployment benefits because their classification as a broad or targeted transfer may vary — over time and across countries — according to the geographical dispersion of unemployed citizens, the main beneficiaries of the program. A simple theoretical model delivers unambiguous predictions on the interaction between electoral institutions and the unemployment rate in contestable and safe districts: electoral incentives induce more generous unemployment benefits in majoritarian than in proportional systems if and only if the unemployment rate is higher in contestable than in safe districts. We test this prediction using a novel dataset with information on electoral competitiveness and unemployment rates at district level, and di↵erent measures of unemployment benefit generosity for 16 OECD countries between 1980 and 2011. The empirical analysis strongly supports the theoretical predictions.
galassonunnari2018.pdf
Leander Heldring, James A. Robinson, and Sebastian Vollmer. Working Paper. “THE ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENTARY ENCLOSURES”.Abstract
We use a dataset of the entire population of English Parliamentary enclosure acts between 1750 and 1830 to provide the first causal evidence of their impact. Exploiting a feature of the Parliamentary process that produced such legislation as a source of exogenous variation, we show that Parliamentary enclosures were associated with significantly higher crop yields, but also higher land inequality. Our results are in line with a literature going back to Arthur Young and Karl Marx on the effects of Parliamentary enclosure on productivity and inequality. They do not support the argument that informal systems of governance or “private orderings”, even in small, cohesive, and stable communities, were able to efficiently allocate commonly used and governed resources.
robinson_et_al_enclosures.pdf
Avidit Acharya and Alexander Lee. Working Paper. “"Economic Foundations of the Territorial State System"”.Abstract
The contemporary world is organized into a system of territorial states in which rulers exercise authority inside clearly dened boundaries and recognize the authority of other rulers outside those boundaries. We argue that this system can be rationalized as an economic cartel in which self-interested and forward-looking rulers maintain high tax revenues by reducing competition in the \market for governance." Our theory explains how the major economic and military developments in Europe starting in the 15th century contributed to the development of this system.
acharyalee2018.pdf
Pablo Beramendi and Jeffrey Jensen. Working Paper. “Economic Geography, Political Inequality, and Public Goods in the Original 13 U.S. States”.Abstract
A large and fruitful literature has focused on the impact of colonial legacies on long-term
development. Yet the mechanisms through which these legacies get transmitted over time remain ambiguous. This paper analyzes the choice and eects of legislative representation as one such mechanism, driven by elites interested in maximizing jointly economic prospects and political influence over time. We focus on malapportionment in the legislatures of the original thirteen British North-American colonies. Their joint independence created a unique juncture in which postcolonial elites simultaneously chose the legislative and electoral institutions under which they would operate. We show that the initial choice of apportionment in the state legislatures is largely a function of economic geography, that such a choice generated persistent differences in representation patterns within states (political inequality), and that the latter shaped public goods provision in the long run.
beramendietal2018.pdf
Marco Tabellini and Giacomo Magistretti. Working Paper. “Economic Integration and the Transmission of Democracy”.Abstract
In this paper, we study the effects of economic integration with democracies on individuals’
democratic values and on countries’ institutions. We combine survey data with
country level measures of democracy from 1960 to 2015, and exploit improvements in air,
relative to sea, transportation to derive a time-varying instrument for trade. We find that
economic integration with democracies increases both citizens’ support for democracy and
countries’ democracy scores. Instead, trade with non-democracies has no impact on either
attitudes or institutions. The effects of trade with democracies are stronger when partners
have a longer history of democracy, grow faster, spend more on public goods, and are
culturally closer. They are also driven by imports, rather than exports, and by integration
with partners that export higher quality goods and that account for a larger share of a
country’s trade in institutionally intensive, cultural, and consumer goods as well as in
goods that involve more face-to-face interactions and entail higher levels of bilateral trust.
These patterns are consistent with trade in goods favoring the transmission of democracy
by signaling the (actual or perceived) desirability of the latter. We examine alternative
mechanisms, and conclude that none of them can, alone, explain our findings.
tabellini_and_magistretti_2023.pdf
Ernesto Dal Bo, Frederico Finan, Olle Folke, Torsten Persson, and Johanna Rickne. Working Paper. “Economic Losers and Political Winners: Sweden's Radical Right”.Abstract
We study the rise of the Sweden Democrats, a radical-right party that rose from negligible size in 2002 to Swedenís third largest party in 2014. We use comprehensive data to study both its politicians (supply side) and voters (demand side). All political candidates for the party can be identified in register data, which also lets us aggregate individual social and economic conditions in municipalities or voting districts and relate them to the party's vote share. We take a starting point in two key economic events: (i) a series of policy reforms in 2006-2011 that significantly widened the disposable- income gap between "insiders" and "outsiders" in the labor market, and (ii) the financial-crisis recession that doubled the job-loss risk for "vulnerable" vs "secure" insiders. On the supply side, the Sweden Democrats over-represent both losing groups relative to the population, whereas all other parties under-represent them, results which also hold when we disaggregate across time, subgroups, and municipalities. On the demand side, the local increase in the insider-outsider income gap, as well as the share of vulnerable insiders, are systematically associated with larger electoral gains for the Sweden Democrats. These findings can be given a citizen-candidate interpretation: economic losers (as we demonstrate) decrease their trust in established parties and institutions. As a result, some economic losers became Sweden-Democrat candidates, and many more supported the party electorally to obtain greater descriptive representation. This way, Swedish politics became potentially more inclusive. But the politicians elected for the Sweden Democrats score lower on expertise, moral values, and social trust ñas do their voters which made local political selection less valence oriented.
dalboetal2018.pdf
Richard C. Sutch. Working Paper. “The Economics of African American Slavery: The Cliometrics Debate”.Abstract
This working paper explores the significant contributions to the history of African-American
slavery made by the application of the tools of cliometrics. As used here “cliometrics” is defined as a method of scientific analysis marked by the explicit use of economic theory and quantitative methods. American slavery of the late antebellum period [1840-1860] was one of the earliest topics that cliometricians focused on and, arguably, the topic upon which they made the largest impact.
sutch2018.pdf
Daniel Enemark, Clark C. Gibson, Matthew D. McCubbins, and Brigitte Seim. Working Paper. “"Effect of Holding Office on the Behavior of Politicians"”.Abstract

Reciprocity is central to our understanding of politics. Most political exchanges—whether they involve legislative vote trading, interbranch bargaining, constituent service, or even the corrupt exchange of public resources for private wealth—require reciprocity. But how does reciprocity arise? Do government officials learn reciprocity while holding office, or do recruitment and selection practices favor those who already adhere to a norm of reciprocity? We recruit Zambian politicians who narrowly won or lost a previous election to play behavioral games that provide a measure of reciprocity. This combination of regression discontinuity and experimental designs allows us to estimate the effect of holding office on behavior. We find that holding office increases adherence to the norm of reciprocity. This study identifies causal effects of holding office on politicians’ behavior.

enemarketal2016.pdf
Peter Buisseret and Carlos Prato. Working Paper. “"Electoral Accountability in Multi-Member Districts"”.Abstract
In many political jurisdictions, electoral districts are served by multiple representatives. In
these multi-member district (MMD) contexts, elections pit incumbent legislators not only against challengers from rival parties, but also other incumbents in the same district, including co-partisan incumbents. We develop a formal theory of legislative representation in MMD systems, in which legislators trade o the pursuit of collective goals versus cultivating personal reputations. We unearth contexts in which MMD electoral systems can more eectively balance the interests of voters and parties as competing principals, relative to single-member districts (SMD). Our framework allows us to unify and re-examine a raft of existing theoretical and empirical claims about the consequences of proportional representation, and further derive new and testable empirical hypothesis about legislative cohesion across dierent MMD electoral rules.
buisseretprato2017.pdf
Thomas Bassetti and Filippo Pavesi. Working Paper. “"Electoral Contributions and the Cost of Unpopularity."”.Abstract
When considering electoral campaigns, candidates receiving contributions from relatively unpopular industries should be regarded less favorably by voters that have information on the sources of funding. To offset this unpopularity effect, politicians may either demand more money for campaign advertising from these industries in order to persuade less informed voters, or shy away from unpopular contributors to avoid losing the support of the informed electorate. Our model predicts that the first effect dominates, and electoral contributions are increasing in industry unpopularity. By using U.S. House elections data and different identification strategies, we provide robust evidence in favor of our predictions.
bassettipavesi2017.pdf
Gilles Serra. Working Paper. “The Electoral Strategies of a Populist Candidate: Does charisma discourage experience and encourage extremism?”.Abstract
I model an election between a populist candidate with little government experience and high charisma and a mainstream candidate with much government experience and low charisma. Taking a step back in time, I also model the career choices of this populist candidate: he must consider how much governing experience to acquire before running for high office, and then he must decide how extremist his campaign platform should be. The model finds two major trade-offs that are unfortunate for the median voter: candidates who are attractive in terms of their high charisma will be unattractive in terms of their low experience and high extremism. The model also finds that popular discontent, coming from an economic or political crisis, makes an inexperienced outsider more likely to win an election with an extremist agenda; this helps explain the recent ‘rise of populism’ identified by several authors around the world. This theory is also able to explain numerous empirical findings: I connect the model to the literature from different academic approaches (behavioral, comparative, and institutional) and different geographical regions (the United States, Latin America, and Europe). Special reference is made to four prominent outsiders: Donald Trump, Hugo Chávez, Alberto Fujimori, and Jean-Marie Le Pen.
serra2018.pdf
Yan Jing, Kiana Amini, Dawei Xi, Shijian Jin, Abdulrahman Alfaraidi, Emily Kerr, Roy Gordon, and Michael Aziz. Working Paper. “Electrochemically induced CO2 capture enabled by aqueous quinone flow chemistry.” ChemRxiv. Publisher's Version
Dirk A. Zetzsche, William A. Birdthistle, Douglas W. Arner, and Ross P. Buckley. Working Paper. “Financial Operating Systems”.Abstract
The rise of financial technology (FinTech) and its potential impact on legal regimes have received close academic attention in recent years, but much of that scholarship has focused on the attributes of individual applications and technologies. By contrast, we focus on the less obvious – but far more significant – development of operating systems for finance, particularly those that govern the global economy for investment. As with software generally, these operating systems are relatively inconspicuous, but extremely powerful, particularly given their role in controlling the world’s $50 trillion investment fund industry, where they already play a significant role in asset management for pension funds and other major institutional investors. We identify the scope of these systems, the economic reasons for their dramatic ascendency, and the legal implications that arise from their possible failures and successes, highlighting the potential for such systems to escape regulation while simultaneously stifling innovation and competition.
Dirk A. Zetzsche, Ross P. Buckley, Douglas W. Arner, and Jànos N. Barberis. Working Paper. “From FinTech to TechFin: The Regulatory Challenges of Data-Driven Finance”.Abstract
Financial technology (‘FinTech’) is transforming finance and challenging its regulation at an unprecedented rate. Two major trends stand out in the current period of FinTech development. The first is the speed of change driven by the commoditization of technology, Big Data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. The second is the increasing number and variety of new entrants into the financial sector, including pre-existing technology and e-commerce companies. This paper considers the impact of these new entrants with their typically large pre-existing non-financial services customer bases. These firms (loosely termed ‘TechFins’) may be characterised by their capacity to leverage the data gathered in their primary business into financial services. In other words, TechFins represent an Uber moment in finance. This shift from financial intermediary (FinTech) to data intermediary (TechFin) raises implications for incumbent financial services firms, FinTech startups and regulators. This seachange calls for analysis to underpin regulatory approaches with a view to balancing the competing interests of innovation, development, financial stability and consumer protection.
Ross P. Buckley, Douglas W. Arner, and Dirk A. Zetzsche. Working Paper. “Sustainability, FinTech and Financial Inclusion”.Abstract

We argue that sustainable balanced development is preconditioned on financial inclusion, and that FinTech is the key driver for financial inclusion. In turn, the full potential of FinTech to support the Sustainable Development Goals will only be realized with a progressive approach to developing infrastructure to support digital financial transformation.

Our research suggests the best way to think about such a strategy is to focus on four primary pillars. The first pillar requires the building of digital identity and simplified account opening and e-KYC systems. This is supported by the second pillar of open interoperable electronic payments systems. The third pillar involves using the infrastructure of the first and second to underpin electronic provision of government services and payments. The fourth pillar – digital financial markets and systems – supports broader access to finance and investment. Implementing the four pillars is a major journey, but one with tremendous potential to transform financial inclusion and sustainable growth.

Pages