More often than not production processes are the joint endeavor of people having different abilities and productivities. Such production processes and the associated surplus production are often not fully transparent in the sense that the relative contributions of involved agents are blurred;...

We use a new dataset on non-resource GDP to examine the impact of commodity price volatility on economic growth in a panel of up to 158 countries during the period 1970-2007. Our main finding is that commodity price volatility leads to a significant increase in non-resource GDP growth in...

This paper studies the influence of interregional inequality within countries on internal con-flicts. Regional inequalities are measured by the population-weighted coefficient of variation of regional GDP per capita. As the main innovation, I use a panel data set of country-level re- gional...

This paper takes stock of the economic performance of resource rich countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over the past forty years. While those countries have maintained high levels of income per capita, they have performed poorly when going beyond the assessment based on...

This paper studies the influence of interregional inequality within countries on internal conflicts. Regional inequalities are measured by the population-weighted coefficient of variation of regional GDP per capita. As the main innovation, I use a panel data set of country-level regional...

This paper suggests that societies exhibiting a large degree of educational polarization among its populace are systematically more likely to slip into civil conflict and civil war. Intuitively, political preferences and beliefs of highly educated citizens are likely to differ fundamentally from...

Existing research has pointed to the decreasing effect of revolutions and wars on income inequality. It is unclear whether this reduction is the result of ongoing changes within countries before revolutions and wars or if the results are standalone effects. In this study, we focus on the case of...

International climate negotiations take place in a setting where uncertainties regarding the impacts of climate change are very large. In this paper, we examine the influence of increasing the probability and impact of large climate change damages, also known as the 'fat tail', on the formation...

We study compliance dynamics generated by a large set of behavioral rules describing social interaction in a population of agents facing an enforcement authority. When the authority adjusts the auditing probability every period, cycling in cheating-auditing occurs: Intensive monitoring induces...

Government or company decisions on whom to hire are mostly delegated to politicians, public sector officials or human resources and procurement managers. Due to anti-corruption laws, agents cannot sell contracts or positions that they are delegated to decide upon. Even if bribing is ruled out,...