We study the effect of U.S. food aid on conflict in recipient countries. Our analysis exploits time variation in food aid shipments due to changes in U.S. wheat production and cross-sectional variation in a country's tendency to receive any U.S. food aid. According to our estimates, an increase...

We estimate the causal effect of a large development program on conflict in the Philippines through a regression discontinuity design that exploits an arbitrary poverty threshold used to assign eligibility for the program. We find that barely eligible municipalities experienced a large increase...

We study an open economy where a pro-labor and a pro-business candidate compete in an election. The winner chooses taxes, which affect investment returns. Electoral outcomes depend on the size of the foreign debt, but the debt itself reflects expectations about the election. The resulting...

This paper uses a new database on foreign aid to examine the relationships among foreign aid, economic policies, and growth per capita GDP. We find that aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal, monetary, and trade policies but has little effect in the...

This paper constructs a model of the transfer paradox for a small open economy with nontraded goods. It demonstrates that increased production of nontraded goods can change their domestic price so as to offset the otherwise beneficial effect of aid and, under certain conditions, to create a...

Most interpretations of prevalent counterinsurgency theory imply that increasing government services reduces rebel violence. Empirically, however, development programs and economic activity sometimes increase violence. Using new panel data on development spending in Iraq, we show that...

Participating in insurgency is physically risky. Why do people do so? Using new data on 3,799 payments to insurgent fighters by Al Qa'ida Iraq, we find that: (i) wages were extremely low relative to outside options, even compared to unskilled labor; (ii) the estimated risk premium is negative;...

We investigate political determinants of land reform implementation in the Indian state of West Bengal. Using a village panel spanning 1974-1998, we do not find evidence supporting the hypothesis that land reforms were positively and monotonically related to control of local governments by a...