economic performance and political institutions. We study these two directions of causation in a broad cross-country panel that … attendance and religious beliefs are positively related to education (thereby conflicting with theories in which religion … and lower fertility. We investigate the effects of official state religions, government regulation of the religion market …

Two important theories of religiosity are the secularization hypothesis and the religion-market model. According to the … depends on the presence of a state religion, regulation of the religion market, suppression of organized religion under … religion tends to increase religiosity, probably because of the subsidies that flow to organized religion. However, in …

In this paper we revisit the relationship between institutions, human capital and development. We argue that empirical … models that treat institutions and human capital as exogenous are misspecified both because of the usual omitted variable … focus on historically-determined differences in human capital and control for the effect of institutions, the impact of …

We exploit differences in the mortality rates faced by European colonialists to estimate the effect of institutions on … different associated institutions. The choice of colonization strategy was, at least in part, determined by whether Europeans … likely to set up worse (extractive) institutions. These early institutions persisted to the present. We document evidence …

differences through the dynamics of saving and investment. We posit that the drivers of economic development include institutions …

negatively related to civil conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. In the reduced form regression they find that higher rainfall is … associated with less conflict. Ciccone (2010) claims that this conclusion is 'erroneous' and argues that higher rainfall levels … are actually linked to more conflict. In this paper we show that the results in Ciccone's paper are based on incorrect …

(CDD)--have shaped local institutions and national political dynamics. The story that emerges is a nuanced one: war does … results are mixed; and for all of its promise, CDD does not appear to transform local institutions nor social norms. All of …

Natural resources have driven both growth and conflict in modern Africa. We model the interaction of parties engaged in … potential conflict over such resources. The likelihood of conflict depends on both the absolute and relative resource endowments … of the parties. Resources fuel conflict by raising the gains from expropriation and by increasing ˝fighting strength …

infrastructure and human capital and quantify the role of various extractive institutions, such as indirect rule and oppression …