This paper quantifies the impact of incentives related to potential membership on institutional change as measured by the World Bank Governance Indicators (WBGI). Based on a panel of 25 transition countries for the period from 1996 to 2008 we show that pre-accession incentives provided by EU and...

This article examines the role of business in the historical development of job security regulations in Germany from their creation in the inter-war period to the dawn of the crisis of the 'German Model' in the 1980s. It contrasts the varieties of capitalism approach, which sees business as...

This paper provides a systematic analysis of the way shifts in property utilization rights in China induced another sequence of institutional changes that led to the rise of rural-urban labor migration from 1980 to 1984, a critical period in the country's market transition. I show that the...

We investigate how nondemocratic regimes use the military and how this can lead to the emergence of military dictatorships. Nondemocratic regimes need the use of force in order to remain in power, but this creates a political moral hazard problem; a strong military may not simply work as an...

This paper examines the impact on TFP of North-South trade-related technology diffusion in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). North-South R&D flows are constructed based on industry-specific R&D in the North, North-South trade patterns, and input-output relations in the South. The main...

During the 1930s and 1940s, collective bargaining emerged as the workplace governance norm in much of the U.S. industrial sector. Following its peak in the 1950s, union density in the U.S. private sector fell steadily, to only 7.4 percent in 2006. Governance shifted from a formalized union norm...

This paper provides evidence of the long-run effects of a permanent increase in agricultural productivity on conflict. We construct a newly digitized and geo-referenced dataset of battles in Europe, the Near East and North Africa covering the period between 1400 and 1900 CE. For variation in...

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries are rich in natural resources and in most of them their extractive industries extract and export natural resources with little industrial processing. This study analyzes the direct and indirect impacts that the extractive industries in...

We explore the effects of persistent income shocks on human capital using oil price fluctuations in a large sample of relevant African countries and employing micro data from multiple waves of the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). Theoretically, such shocks enable human capital investment via...

This paper analyzes the role of networks in the spatial diffusion of local economic shocks in Africa. We show that road and ethnic connectivity are particularly important factors for diffusing economic spillovers over longer distances. We then determine the key players, i.e., which districts are...