This paper examines the impact of crime and insecurity on support for and satisfaction with democracy and trust in institutions. We use survey data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) for Colombia during the 2004-2010 period. We find that perceptions of insecurity, crime...

We investigate the relationship between political networks, weak institutions, and election fraud during the 2010 parliamentary election in Afghanistan combining: (i) data on political connections between candidates and election officials; (ii) a nationwide controlled evaluation of a novel...

We investigate the relationship between violence and economic risk preferences in Afghanistan combining: (i) a two-part experimental procedure identifying risk preferences, violations of Expected Utility, and specific preferences for certainty; (ii) controlled recollection of fear based on...

Risk and time are intertwined. The present is known while the future is inherently risky. This is problematic when studying time preferences since uncontrolled risk can generate apparently present-biased behavior. We systematically manipulate risk in an intertemporal choice experiment....

Experimentally elicited discount rates are frequently higher than what seems reasonable for economic decision-making. Such high rates are often attributed to present-biased discounting. A well-known bias of standard measurements is the assumption of linear consumption utility. Attempting to...

We construct a model to study the implications of changes in political institutions for economic institutions. A change in political institutions alters the distribution of de jure political power, but creates incentives for investments in de facto political power to partially or even fully...