Capitalist investment and political liberalization
构建了一个政治经济模型，分析统治者如何在保护资本投资与自身政治风险之间权衡，发现资源禀赋较高时投资反而减少，中等资源禀赋时自由化激励最强。
Abstract. We consider a simple political-economic model where capitalist investment is constrained by the government's temptation to expropriate. Political liberalization can relax this constraint, increasing the government's revenue, but also increasing the ruler's political risks. We analyze the ruler's optimal liberalization, where our measure of political liberalization is the probability of the ruler being replaced if he tried to expropriate private investments. Poorer endowments can support reputational equilibria with more investment, even without liberalization. So we find a resources curse, where larger resource endowments can decrease investment and reduce the ruler's revenue. The ruler's incentive to liberalize can be greatest with intermediate resource endowments. Strong liberalization becomes optimal in cases where capital investment yields approximately constant returns to scale. Adding independent revenue decreases optimal liberalization and investment. Mobility of productive factors that complement capital can increase incentives to liberalize, but equilibrium prices may adjust so that liberal and authoritarian regimes co-exist. 1.