We examine the effect of oil price fluctuations on democratic institutions over the 1960-2007 period. We also exploit the very persistent response of income to oil price fluctuations to study the effect of persistent (oil price-driven) income shocks on democracy. Our results indicate that...

According to the economic approach to political transitions, transitory negative economic shocks can open a window of opportunity for democratic improvement. Testing the theory requires a source of transitory shocks to the aggregate economy. We use rainfall shocks in Sub-Saharan African...

To learn more about the effect of economic conditions on civil war, we examine whether Sub-Saharan civil wars are more likely to start following downturns in the international price of countries’ main export commodities. The data show a robust effect of commodity price downturns on the...