This article is the first to systematically study whether foreign aid affects the net flows of refugees from recipient countries. Combining refugee data on 141 origin countries over the 1976-2013 period with bilateral Official Development Assistance data, we estimate the causal effects of a...

Does anti-migration sentiment threaten internationalization? One major pro-Brexit argument was that it would enable more control over immigration. The most recent US presidential election also focused on immigration. Anti-migration sentiment could be a threat to internationalization, given that...

Offshoring continues to be an important dimension of firms' internationalization choices. However, offshoring also increases contract enforcement costs by inhibiting the coordination and monitoring of performance. Immigrant employees may reduce such costs through their specific knowledge of the...

We propose and test empirically a theory describing the endogenous formation and persistence of mega-states, using China as an example. We suggest that the relative timing of the emergence of agricultural societies, and their distance from each other, set off a race between their autochthonous...

In this paper, I assess the causal effects of judicial administration on a sample of Italian criminal firms in the period 2004-2016, to shed light on the dynamic path of the firm's performance from pre-seizure to the post-entry judicial administration phase. By using exogenous enforcement law...

This paper links banking system development to the colonial and legal history of African countries. Based on a sample of 40 African countries from 2000 to 2018, our empirical findings show a significant dependence of current financial institutions on the inherited legal origin and the...

This paper explores the impact of financial and legal obstacles that affect small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in middle-income East Asian countries by utilizing the most recent and unique dataset from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. We particularly assess whether and at what level the...

We study the impact of a law, which required the increase of the proportion of women on boards of listed companies to at least one third. We look at its impact on listed banks, but also test whether it led to spillovers into non-listed banks belonging to listed groups or along other board...

Can a society suffering contests between rich and poor achieve good governance in the face of endemic corruption? We examine a stylized poor state with weak institutions in which a “culture of evasion” damages state authority. Many evade tax payments, limiting the state’s economic...

This paper links banking systems development to the colonial and legal history of African countries. Specifically, we investigate the impact of differing legal traditions on the development of existing investor and creditor protection, and on African banking systems. Based on a sample of 40...