argue that existing studies on the impact of natural disasters on economic development have several important limitations …

economic development, and find that democracies grow faster than autocracies. Furthermore, we illustrate how the estimation …

1950s. Finally, we turn to the determinants of a broad array of development indicators for the year 1960 and for the 1960 …

We construct a simple model where political elites may block technological and institutional development, because of a … replaced. Fearing replacement, political elites are unwilling to initiate change, and may even block economic development. We … show that elites are unlikely to block development when there is a high degree of political competition, or when they are …

-specific pre-colonial institutions in shaping comparative regional development in Africa. We utilize information on the spatial … we document a positive cross-sectional association between national institutions and regional economic development … regional development. The positive within country effect of pre-colonial institutions also obtains in regions of partitioned …

We investigate the role of national institutions on regional development in a novel framework. We exploit the fact that … correlation between formal national institutions and economic development has to be carefully interpreted. …

We examine the link between pre-colonial statehood and contemporary regional African development, as reflected in …-country analysis reveals a strong positive correlation between pre-colonial political centralization and contemporary development (and …