European empires had two key economic aspects: the extraction of colonial wealth by colonizers, and the relevance of trade for the colonial economies. I build a simple model of decolonization that puts these two elements at centre stage. By controlling policy in the colony, the mother country...

Mine-related transport infrastructure specializes in connecting mines to the coast, and not so much to neighboring countries. This is most clearly seen in developing countries, whose transport infrastructure was originally designed to facilitate the export of natural resources in colonial times....

I construct a theory of foreign interventions in which the preferences of the foreign country over alternative local groups are determined by each group's international economic ties. In equilibrium, the foreign country supports the group with which it has the strongest ties, since this is most...