Redding and Sturm (2008) use the German division as a natural experiment to study the importance of market access for regional development. They show empirically that cities close to the East-West German border experienced a significant decline in population growth due to division. I argue that...

This paper investigates whether membership in Regional Trade agreements (RTAs) with environmental provisions (EPs) affect relative and absolute levels of environmental quality and whether the inclusion of most comprehensive EPs is associated to higher environmental quality. In order to do so,...

There has been a wide debate on whether democracy actually has an effect on economic outcomes, and especially on international trade. With a new estimation strategy, we analyze this relationship taking a look at the distribution of countries ́trading activity. Using a panel quantile estimation...

As is now well documented, aid is given for both political as well as economic reasons. The conventional wisdom is that politically-motivated aid is less effective in promoting developmental objectives. We examine the ex-post performance ratings of World Bank projects and generally find that...

We investigate whether elected members of the United Nations Security Council receive favorable treatment from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), analyzing panel data on the level of conditionality attached to (a maximum of) 314 IMF arrangements with 101 countries over the period of 1992 to...

We use factor analysis to derive a robust measure of religiosity from items reported in five waves of the World Value Survey. Our measure of religiosity is negatively correlated with per capita income. Development apparently causes religiosity to fall to about half its pre-modern level. Most...

This study explores a basic idea in political economy: Trading money for political influence. Our focus is at the level of international institutions, where governments may exploit their influence in one organization to gain leverage over another. In particular, we consider the lending...