In the last few years, numerous econometric studies have unearthed evidence of donor influence over the geographic distribution of funds from international financial institutions (IFIs). Scholars are now beginning to use quantitative methods to delve into the details of donor influence to...

One of the major empirical challenges in the study of international institutions and organizations is assessing their impact on state policy and behavior. As social scientists, political scientists focus on inferring the causal effect of institutions from observed patterns of behavior. However,...

To what extent are voters' attitudes toward immigration determined by considerations of material self interest and fears about labor market competition? General equilibrium models predict that immigration has negligible effects on the wages and employment of most native workers, and these...

A central ambition of the Lisbon Agenda and Europe 2020 is promoting greater innovation in Europe. This paper investigates three questions: How have EU efforts to foster innovation affected innovation finance? How has European financial market integration affected innovation finance? And, are...

20th century developments of inequalities in citizens’ living conditions in Western countries are characterized by two major turnarounds. The first turnaround came immediately after the end of the Second World War, when inequalities precipitously declined and show relative stability for about...

It is generally accepted that in established democracies, citizens' perception of political corruption is corrosive of support for the government and even the regime. What is less clear is that perceived corruption has the same effect in authoritarian regimes, where democratic norms of official...

This paper examines the variation in state response to ethno-nationalist secessionism. When faced with independence movements, states respond either with violent repression, or with peaceful concessions. I argue that a state’s vulnerability to external security threats drives its response. If...

Does democratic governance expand wealth and prosperity? There is no consensus about this issue despite the fact that for more than half a century, rival theories about the regime-growth relationship have been repeatedly tested against the empirical evidence, using a variety of cases, models and...

I use the Tragedy of the Commons dilemma to analyze a core difficulty in explaining the emergence of dilemma-solving institutions: On the one hand, institutions must induce individuals to act differently than they would in the absence of the institution in question (or the institution would fail...

We suggest a new approach to narrowing the field in elections, based on the deservingness of candidates to be contenders in a runoff, or to be declared one of several winners. Instead of specifying some minimum percentage (e.g., 50) that the leading candidate must surpass to avoid a runoff...