Political Economy in a Changing World

We provide a general framework for the analysis of institutional dynamics in an environment in which payoffs and political powers change stochastically. Assuming that economic and political institutions as well as individual types can be ordered, and preferences and the distribution of political pow...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Egorov, Georgy (Author), Sonin, Konstantin (Author), Acemoglu, K. Daron (Contributor)
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics (Contributor)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of Chicago Press, 2018-02-13T17:43:34Z.
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Summary:We provide a general framework for the analysis of institutional dynamics in an environment in which payoffs and political powers change stochastically. Assuming that economic and political institutions as well as individual types can be ordered, and preferences and the distribution of political power satisfy natural "single-crossing" (increasing differences) conditions, we prove existence of a pure-strategy Markov voting equilibrium, provide conditions for its uniqueness, and present a number of comparative static results. We then use this framework to study the dynamics of political rights and repression in the presence of threats from extremist groups and the dynamics of collective experimentation.