Africa's interior-to-coast roads are well suited to export natural resources, but not to support regional trade. Are they the optimal response to geography and comparative advantage, or the result of suboptimal political distortions? We investigate the political determinants of road paving in...

We analyze the political economy of monetary unification among countries with different quality of institutions. Countries with stronger institutions have lower public spending and better investment incentives, even under a stronger currency. Governments under weaker institutions spend more so...

This paper discusses the implications of autonomous-connected-electric-shared vehicles (ACES) for public finance, which have so far been widely ignored. In OECD countries, 5-12% of federal and up to 30% of local tax revenue are currently from fuel and vehicle taxation. The diffusion of ACES will...

This paper provides a brief review of the connecting literature in management science, economics and finance, and discusses some research that is related to the three disciplines. Academics could develop theoretical models and subsequent econometric models to estimate the parameters in the...

We embed a competitive search model with labor market discrimination, or nepotism, into a two-sector, two-country framework in order to analyze how labor market discrimination impacts the pattern of international trade and also how trade trade affects discrimination. Discrimination, or nepotism,...

Entry requires external finance, especially for less wealthy entrepreneurs, so poor investor protection limits competition. We model how incumbents lobby harder to block access to finance to entrants when politicians are less accountable to voters. In a broad cross-section of countries and...

The paper seeks to explain the huge cross country variation in private pension funding,shaped by historical choice made when universal pension systems were created after theGreat Depression. According to Perotti and von Thadden (2006), large inflationaryshocks due to war damage devastated middle...