We document that trust in public institutions ﾖ and particularly trust in banks, business and government ﾖ has declined over recent years. U.S. time series evidence suggests that this partly reflects the pro-cyclical nature of trust in institutions. Cross-country comparisons reveal a clear...

Using panel data for a maximum of 109 countries over the years 1976-2000, we empirically analyze the impact of decentralization on the occurrence of transnational terror. Our results show that expenditure decentralization reduces the number of transnational terror events in a country, while...

This paper tests the hypothesis that international migration experiences may promote better institutions at home by raising the demand for political accountability. In order to examine this question, we use a simple postcard voting experiment designed to capture the populationﾒs desire for...

This paper investigates whether the religious identity of state legislators in India influences development outcomes, both for citizens of their religious group and for the population as a whole. To control for politician identity to be correlated with constituency level voter preferences or...

What will be political legacy of the Coronavirus pandemic? We find that epidemic exposure in an individual's "impressionable years" (ages 18 to 25) has a persistent negative effect on confidence in political institutions and leaders. We find similar negative effects on confidence in public...

This paper analyses the impact of government grants on labour demand using plant leveldata for manufacturing industry in Ireland. Our data consists of a large sample of plants andtheir complete grant history...

Many aspects of the economic transition which started in 1989 in Poland are by nowcomplete. However, the route Polish governments have so far taken concerning the systemof support for low-income families still implies very different poverty alleviation schemescompared to those found in many...

We estimate the wage penalty associated with working in the South African informal sector.To this end we use a rich data set on non-self employed males that allows one to accuratelydistinguish workers employed in the informal sector from those employed in the formal sectorand link individuals...

Using firm level data on 70,000 enterprises in 107 countries, this paper finds importanteffects of access to finance, business regulations, corruption, and to a lesser extent,infrastructure bottlenecks in explaining patterns of job creation at the firm level. The paperfocuses on how the impact...

Over the last decade house prices increased remarkably in many countries. However, whilein several countries there was an employment boom in the construction sector, in others theshare of employment in this sector did not significantly change...