New paper alert! 📣

@chrisblattman.bsky.social, Arthur Yu, and I reexamine the autocratic growth penalty—the finding that autocracies systematically underperform democracies in economic growth.

TL;DR, the penalty is concentrated in personalist, not institutionalized autocracies.

Details👇 1/X

New Working Paper:

Why does power alternate even without formal institutions? We develop a dynamic model where power alternation emerges spontaneously before it is formalized, as part of an efficient self-enforcing agreement governed by evolving norms.

Link here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

This year we will be in Michigan in August. Apply if you are midway through your PhD program in the social sciences to learn from the best in the discipline how theory and empirical methods come together!

Somebody at @ajpseditor.bsky.social has a great sense of humor, having accepted our paper on the “dictator’s dilemma” the very day that Bashar al-Assad fled Syria.

Joint with @luozhaotian.bsky.social, @antonshirikov.bsky.social, and Dmitriy Vorobyev.

https://osf.io/b94fc