Does the average level of sickness absence in a neighborhood affect individual sickness absence through social interaction on the neighborhood level? To answer this question, we consider evidence of local benefit-dependency cultures. Well-known methodological problems in this type of analysis...

Over the last several decades, both economists and political scientists have shown interest in coups d'état. Numerous studies have been dedicated to understanding the causes of coups. However, model uncertainty still looms large. About one hundred potential determinants of coups have been...

The diversion of development aid to the recipient's military may be one explanation why aid is often found to be ineffective in promoting economic growth and development. Previous studies have not derived the causal effects of development aid on military expenditure. Using a new instrumental...

Cyber technology represents digital military capability with the purpose of causing damage to the military strength and the social infrastructure of a potential enemy. War using conventional weapons may be preceded by or combined with a war using cyber technology. This paper introduces such...

A dynamic multi-stage decision-theoretic approach is introduced to establish the optimal offset and its incidence, the contract price arising from bargaining, and the scale of the acquisition. A new rationale is suggested for offsets in terms of their role as an insurance devise. Results are...

We examine whether changes of government influence compliance with international agreements. We investigate compliance with the NATO two percent target to which all NATO countries committed themselves during the NATO summit in Wales in 2014. The dataset includes the military expenditure by NATO...

This study examines the effect of religiosity on terrorism by focusing on one of the five pillars of Islam: Ramadan fasting. For identification, we exploit two facts: First, daily fasting from dawn to sunset during Ramadan is considered mandatory for most Muslims. Second, the Islamic calendar is...

This paper investigates the determinants of the different forms taken by regional integration in different parts of the world. This raises the issue of the relationship between economic and political integration. The theoretical model shows that, in an insecure world, the interplays between...

We show that the recent rise in Afghan opium production is caused by violent conflicts. Violence destroys roads and irrigation, crucial to alternative crops, and weakens local incentives to rebuild infrastructure and enforce law and order. Exploiting a unique data set, we show that Western...

We develop a theory of interstate conflict in which the degree of genealogical relatedness between populations has a positive effect on their conflict propensities because more closely related populations, on average, tend to interact more and develop more disputes over sets of common issues. We...