My empirical results in Potrafke (2012) confirm past conclusions that Muslim-majority countries are less likely to be democratic. Hanusch takes issue with my results – and by inference with all past empirical results on the relation between Islam and democracy. In his comment on my study,...

I investigate empirically the role of religion and political institutions in policies against human trafficking, using the new 3P Anti-trafficking Policy Index. The dataset contains 175 countries. The results show that governments in countries with Christian majorities implement stricter...

The diversion of development aid to the recipient's military may be one explanation why aid is often found to be ineffective in promoting economic growth and development. Previous studies have not derived the causal effects of development aid on military expenditure. Using a new instrumental...

Discrimination has been documented against women in Muslim-majority countries. Constitutions differ among Muslim-majority countries. By using women's rights indicators and exploiting cross-country variation, we find that discrimination against women is more pronounced in countries where Islam is...

There has been much study of the consequences of economic freedom but, outside of the role of political institutions, there has been little study of the determinants of economic freedom. We investigate whether religion affects economic freedom. Our cross-sectional dataset includes 137 countries...

My empirical results in Potrafke (2012) confirm past conclusions that Muslim-majority countries are less likely to be democratic. Hanusch takes issue with my results – and by inference with all past empirical results on the relation between Islam and democracy. In his comment on my study,...

I investigate empirically the role of religion and political institutions in policies against human trafficking, using the new 3P Anti-trafficking Policy Index. The dataset contains 175 countries. The results show that governments in countries with Christian majorities implement stricter...

We extend “economic equivalence” results, like the Ricardian equivalence proposition, to the political sphere where policy is chosen sequentially. We derive conditions under which a policy regime (summarizing admissible policy choices in every period) and a state are “politico-economically...

We analyze the short and long run effects of demographic ageing—increased longevity and reduced fertility—on per-capita growth. The OLG model captures direct effects, working through adjustments in the savings rate, labor supply, and capital deepening, and indirect effects, working through...

I analyze how lack of commitment affects the maturity structure of sovereign debt. Governments balance benefits of default induced redistribution and costs due to income losses in the wake of a default. Their choice of short- versus long-term debt affects default and rollover decisions by...