Despite growing concerns about the erosion of social cohesion and intensified social unrest as consequence of increasing economic and emotional stress, evidence for such a link is still lacking. We use a unique combination of nationally representative survey data, event data on social unrest,...

In 1790, the Revolutionary government expropriated most property owned by the Church and its entities, and sold it by auction. This effectively ended the centuries-old participation of the Church in wine production in France. Focusing on Burgundy, this article sketches the contours of the sale...

This study examines the impact of political risk and corporate governance mechanisms (CGM) on bank stability. The research problem was addressed using a sample of 954 bank-year observations from 14 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries during the period 2010-2018 to take into account the...

The Middle East region is recognized by observers as one of the most politically unstable areas worldwide. Due to the significant growth of foreign direct investment in the MENA region during the period before the recent political turmoil, this study empirically tests the impact of these...

This paper is the second update of the Reported Social Unrest Index (Barrett et al. 2022), outlining developments in global social unrest since March 2022. It shows that the fraction of countries experiencing major social unrest events has been stable. Reasons for social unrest can be broadly...

We study the effect of a corruption reflection index on internal conflict in Iran using a novel measure of corruption based on newspaper coverage. We use the Vector Autoregression (VAR) model and its applied tools of impulse response and variance decomposition analyses to track the response of...

How do radical reforms of the state shape economic development over time? In 1790, France’s first Constituent Assembly overhauled the kingdom’s organization to set up new administrative entities and local capitals. In a subset of departments, new capitals were chosen quasi-randomly as the...