Recent advances in the political economy literature suggests that constitutional arrangements determine a wide range of economic policy outcomes. In particular, it is argued that di¤erent forms of government (presidential versus parliamentary) induce more or less 'growth promoting'policies. However, e¤ects on long run growth have proved harder to identify. We exploit the fact that natural resources are randomly distributed to identify di¤erences in the long-term performance of economies with di¤erent constitutional forms. Existing theory suggests that the presence of vast natural resources should a¤ect growth di¤erently in countries with di¤erent constitutional designs. Empirically we …nd strong support for this hypothesis -constitutions indeed seem to matter for how natural resource abundance a¤ects long run growth. In fact, the form of government matters more than democratic rule. We also …nd interaction e¤ects of electoral rules (majority versus proportional voting) and resource abundance on growth, although these e¤ects are less clear-cut and less robust.

Political economy theories on the "natural resource curse" predict that natural resource wealth is a determining factor for the length of time political leaderships remain in o¢ ce.Whether resource wealth leads to longer or shorter durations in political o¢ ce depends on the political incentives created by the natural resources, which in turn depend on the types of institutions and natural resource. Exploiting a sample of more than 600 political leadership durations in up to 152 countries, we …nd that both institutions and resource types matter for the e¤ect that natural resource wealth has on political survival: (i) wealth derived from natural resources a¤ects political survival in intermediate and autocratic, but not in democratic, polities; and (ii) while oil and non-lootable diamonds are associated with positive e¤ects on the duration in political o¢ ce, minerals are associated with negative duration e¤ects.

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Most theories of voter behavior predict that electoral participation will be higher in elections where more is at stake. We test this prediction by studying how participation is affected by exogenous variation in local governments' financial flexibility to provide pork for their voters. Utilizing simultaneous elections for different offices, we identify a positive effect of election stakes on participation: Higher stakes at the local level increase participation at the local relative to the regional election. Survey evidence indicates that the underlying mechanism relates to citizens' acquisition of information.

Do elites capture foreign aid? This paper documents that aid disbursements to highly aid-dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers known for bank secrecy and private wealth management, but not in other financial centers. The estimates are not confounded by contemporaneous shocks such as civil conflicts, natural disasters and financial crises, and are robust to instrumenting with predetermined aid commitments. The implied leakage rate is around 7.5% at the sample mean and tends to increase with the ratio of aid to GDP. The findings are consistent with aid capture in the most aid-dependent countries.