New paper on the political economy of monarchy

Since my teenage years I have been fascinated by the colourfulness of monarchy.  Most other children grow out of it, but I did not--and have occasionally mixed it up with my professional interest in political economy and comparative politics.

The forthcoming issue of Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics features an article by myself and Christian Bjørnskov: "Economic Growth and Institutional Reform in Modern Monarchies and Republics: A Historical Cross-Country Perspective 1820–2000" (gated version; old, ungated version).  Here is the abstract:

Conventional arguments suggest that republics ought to grow faster than monarchies and experience lower transitional costs following reforms. We employ a panel of 27 countries observed from 1820 to 2000 to estimate these differences. Results show no significant growth differences between the two regime types. Effects of incremental reforms do not differ between them, but those of large-scale reforms do. Specifically, we find a strong valley-of-tears effect of large reforms in republics, and monarchies benefit from such reforms in the ten-year perspective adopted here. We offer some tentative thoughts on the underlying mechanisms responsible for the results.

I have previously published on "The Constitutional Economics of Autocratic Succession" (Public Choice, 2000), looking at coups against Danish monarchs ca. 936-1849, ditto in "Autocratic Succession" (2004) with data also from Sweden, and on "Rational Bandits: Plunder, Public Goods and the Vikings"
(Public Choice, 2003) (with Gert Tinggaard Svendsen).