We develop a political economy model where some politicians have a comparative advantage in undertaking a task and this gives them an electoral advantage. This creates an incentive to underperform in the task in order to maintain their advantage. We interpret the model in the context of fighting...

We develop a political economy model where some politicians have a comparative advantage in undertaking a task and this gives them an electoral advantage. This creates an incentive to underperform in the task in order to maintain their advantage. We interpret the model in the context of fighting...

Current empirical growth models limit the determinants of country growth to geographic, economic, and institutional variables. This study draws on conflict variables from the Correlates of War (COW) project to ask a critical question: How do different types of conflict affect country growth...

We jointly analyze the genesis of terrorism and civil war, providing a simple conceptual framework to explain why violent opposition groups choose distinct forms of violence (i.e., terrorism and open rebellion). We argue that the distinct modes of violent opposition are chosen by violent...

This paper proposes a simple framework to better understand an opposition group's choice between peace, terrorism, and open civil conflict against the government. Our model implies that terrorism emerges if constraints on the ruling executive group are intermediate and rents are sizeable,...

The most influential recent work on the determinants of civil wars found the factors associated with the grievance motivation to be largely irrelevant. Our paper subjects the results of this empirical work to further scrutiny by embedding the study of civil war in a more general analysis of...

Leading theories of institutional and economic development emphasize the role of informal norms and the strength of civil society. Though informal norms and civil society are usually thought to change incrementally, exposure to violent conflict may shock these institutions. Well identified...

To date, there is limited understanding about the consequences of wartime dynamics for post-war state-building processes. This paper explores one such dynamics-the forms of governance exercised by armed groups during wartime-and proposes a theoretical framework outlining how forms of wartime...