Deindustrialisation, stagnant real incomes of production workers and increasing inequality are latter-day features of many economies. It’s common to assume that such developments pressure policy-makers to relax environmental standards. However, when heavily polluting industries become less...

This paper examines whether a country's economic reform are affected by reforms adopted by other countries. A simple model of economic reforms is developed to motivate the econometric work. Unsurprisingly, the model predicts that reforms are more likely when factors of production are...

There has been no shortage of theories which purport to explain why globalisation may have, adverse, insignificant or even beneficial effects on income and earnings inequality. Surprisingly, the empirical realities remain an almost complete mystery. In this paper we use data on industrial wage...

For a number of OECD countries, the deterioration of labour market outcomes for less-skilled workers since the early 1980’s has coincided with a steady decline in union membership. Globalisation is commonly believed to have contributed to both developments. However, recent studies fail to find...

We examine whether and under which circumstances World Bank projects and IMF programs affect the likelihood of major government crises. Using a sample of more than 90 developing countries over the period 1970-2002, we find that crises are on average more likely as a consequence of Bank and Fund...

There are many stories of democracy but little consensus over which variables robustly determine its emergence and survival. We apply extreme bounds analysis to test the robustness of 59 factors proposed in the literature, evaluating over 3 million regressions. The most robust determinants of...

What are the main causes of international terrorism? The lessons from the surge of academic research that followed 9/11 remain elusive. The careful investigation of the relative roles of economic and political conditions did little to change the fact that existing econometric estimates diverge...

This paper examines the impact of major disasters on trade flows using a gravity model(170 countries, 1962-2004). As a conservative estimate, an additional disaster reduces imports on average by 0,2% and exports by 0.1%. Despite the apparent persistence of bilateral trade volumes, the impact of...

We examine the relationship between terrorism and cabinet duration. Our data set includes more than 2,400 cabinets in over 150 countries in the period 1968-2002. We find a small, but significant effect of terrorism on the probability of government failure. Furthermore, we find that the impact of...

The paper presents a political economy model linking terror and governments’ respect for human rights. Using panel data for 111 countries over the period 1973-2002, we then empirically analyze whether and to what extent terror affects human rights – measured by three indices covering a wide...