We use recent developments in the empirics of comparative case studies to analyze the effect of binding emission targets under the Kyoto Protocol on the development of CO2 emissions of seven major Annex B countries. In particular, we investigate whether committing to a specific greenhouse gas...

This paper presents a model of political competition, where voter decisions are affected by their ideological adherence to political parties. We derive a number of interesting results: First, we show that an equilibrium exists even though voting is fully deterministic. Second, although...

Health improvements in India, while significant, have not kept up with rapid economic growth rates. The poor in India face high out-of-pocket payments for health care, a significant burden of infectious diseases, and a rapidly increasing burden of non-communicable diseases. Against this...

We study determinants of market organization of local public services by an empiricalexamination of one of the most visible municipal services, residential waste management. Usinga multinomial logit model and data for 1,000 U.S. communities, we explore the effect of politicalinfluence, voter...

We study the effects of a labor-intensive health care sector within an R&D-driven growth model with overlapping generations. Health care increases longevity and labor participation/productivity. We examine under which conditions expanding health care enhances growth and welfare. Even if the...

We relate the design of contract law to the process of development. In this paper, contract law de fines which private agreements are enforceable (i.e. are binding and enforced by courts) and which are not. Speci cally, we consider an economy where agents face a hold-up problem (moral hazard in...

The impact of economic institutions on development is presently taken for granted but there is surprisingly scarce evidence on the channels through which institutions affect the organization of output. Imperfections in contractual enforcement, for example, could lead firms to adopt technologies...

In this paper we reexamine the link between gender inequality and corruption. We review the literature on the relationship between representation of women in economic and political life, democracy and corruption, and bring in a new previously omitted variable that captures the level of...

In this paper the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) is constructed with Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Partial Least Squares (PLS). Using the SIGI, we test the effects of social institutions related to gender inequality on several development outcomes, such as female education,...

In this paper, we investigate whether better information about the macroeconomic environment of an economy has a positive impact on its capital inflows, namely portfolio and foreign direct investment (FDI). The purpose of our study is to explicitly quantify information asymmetries by compliance...