This paper studies the determinants of foreign land acquisition for large-scale agriculture. To do so, gravity models are estimated using data on bilateral investment relationships, together with newly constructed indicators of agro-ecological suitability in areas with low population density as...

I use a monthly panel of provincially-collected central government revenues and conflict fatalities to estimate government revenues lost due to conflict in Afghanistan since 2005. I identify causal effects by instrumenting for conflict using pre-sample ethno-linguistic share. Headline estimates...

This paper identifies the factors linked to cross-country differentials in growth performance in the aftermath of social conflict for 30 sub-Saharan African countries using panel data techniques. Our results show that changes in the terms of trade are the most important correlate of economic...

This paper formalizes the role of legal infrastructure in economic development in a general equilibrium model with endogenously determined property rights enforcement. It illustrates the mutual importance of property rights protection and market production by the model’s multiplicity of...

We study the relative efficiency of outside-owned versus employee-owned firms and analyze implications for institutional change in a context of technological innovation. When decisions are made through majority voting, the vote on technology choice is used to influence the later vote on the...

Recent studies on the relationship between financial development and poverty have been inconclusive. Some claim that, by allowing more entrepreneurs to obtain financing, financial development improves the allocation of capital, which has a particularly large impact on the poor. Others argue that...