International migration of people is a momentous and complex phenomenon. Research on its causes and consequences, requires sufficient data. While some datasets are available, the nature of migration complicates their scientific use. Virtually no existing dataset captures international migration...

Current empirical growth models limit the determinants of country growth to geographic, economic, and institutional variables. This study draws on conflict variables from the Correlates of War (COW) project to ask a critical question: How do different types of conflict affect country growth...

European empires had two key economic aspects: the extraction of colonial wealth by colonizers, and the relevance of trade for the colonial economies. I build a simple model of decolonization that puts these two elements at centre stage. By controlling policy in the colony, the mother country...

We study the effect of a corruption reflection index on internal conflict in Iran using a novel measure of corruption based on newspaper coverage. We use the Vector Autoregression (VAR) model and its applied tools of impulse response and variance decomposition analyses to track the response of...

We study the international protection of consumer data in a model where data usage benefits firms at the expense of their customers. We show that a multinational firm does not balance this trade-off efficiently if its data usage lacks (full) transparency or if consumers’ privacy preference...

The emergence and evolution of modern science since the 17th century has led to three major breakthroughs in the human condition. The first, the Industrial Revolution, started in the late 18th century and is based chiefly on developments associated with the rise of the natural sciences. The...

This paper explores the dynamics of press freedom around events that threaten or oust the incumbent regime of a country. While democracies on average grant the press more freedom, our theoretical starting point is that democracies and autocracies may have similar incentives to protect the power...

Using annual data on individual US airlines over the 1995-2015 period, this paper presents regression results relating an airline's total fuel usage to seven variables: the available ton miles of capacity (passengers plus freight and mail) provided by the airline; the average seat capacity of its...

Airline fuel consumption is costly for the firms and for society as well due to a climate-change externality. We study how fuel price changes affect cost-minimizing choices by airlines that have implications for the extent of this externality. The airline industry's capital stock can be easily...