The current global financial "non-system" is marked by instability. In the absence of global solutions, a series of regional arrangements of monetary cooperation have been emerging to cope with such instability. The paper focuses on regional payment systems as an initial step of regional...

Over the past seventeen years the Brazilian macroeconomic performance has been considerably weaker than in previous decades. Inflation reached unprecedented levels and economic growth declined considerably. Despite the overall perception that macroeconomic performance is closely related to...

State capacity is optimized when public institutions are staffed by individuals with public-service motivation. However, when motivated agents value the collective reputation of their place of employment, steady-state equilibria with both high and low aggregate motivation (reputation) in the...

We study the long-run implications of regional and ethnic favoritism in Africa. Combining geocoded individual-level survey data from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) with data on national leaders’ birthplaces across 41 African countries, we explore the educational attainment of adults...

We study the economic implications of mineral resource activity for non-mining regions at the grid-level across the African continent. We find that capital cities benefit from mineral resource activity anywhere in the country. Leaders’ birth regions also benefit, but only in autocratic...

In this paper, we study the extent to which ministers engage in regional favoritism. We are the first to provide a comprehensive analysis of a larger set of the governing elite, not just focusing on the primary leader. We hand-collect birthplaces of this governing elite globally. Combining this...