1. Refereed Journal // 2022

    Democracy and the Quality of Economic Institutions: Theory and Evidence

    We present a simple model, illustrating how democracy may improve the quality of the economic institutions. The model further suggests that institutional quality varies more across autocracies than across…

  2. Refereed Journal // 2022

    Taxes and Business Philanthropy in Armenia

    The majority of countries around the world provide tax incentives for business philanthropy. However, little is known about the responsiveness of businesses to this tax treatment. This paper expands on this…

  3. Refereed Journal // 2022

    Austerity and Distributional Policy

    How does fiscal austerity affect redistributive policies? We document that during austerity episodes, countries tend to increase marginal income tax rates on top earners, but not on average earners. We then show…

  4. Refereed Journal // 2022

    Supplier Selection and Contract Enforcement: Evidence from Performance Bonding

    We analyze an important but little-studied institution for balancing supply risk in the management of procurement operations: performance bonding. By adding the surety as a third party that guarantees…