Neither economics nor political science can explain the process of modern social development. The fact that developed societies always have developed economies and developed polities suggests that the connection between economics and politics must be a fundamental part of the development...

The increase in army size observed in early modern times changed the way states conducted wars. Starting in the late 18th century, states switched from mercenaries to a mass army by conscription. In order for the population to accept to fight and endure war, the government elites began to...

This study uses discontinuities in U.S. strategies employed during the Vietnam War to estimate their causal impacts. It identifies the effects of bombing by exploiting rounding thresholds in an algorithm used to target air strikes. Bombing increased the military and political activities of the...

How do nationalistic media affect animosity between ethnic groups? We consider one of Europe's deadliest conflicts since WWII: the Serbo-Croatian conflict. We show that, after a decade of peace, cross-border nationalistic Serbian radio triggers ethnic hatred towards Serbs in Croatia. Mostly...

This paper analyzes whether the propensity to secede by subnational regions responds mostly to differences in income per capita or to distinct identities. We explore this question in a quantitative political economy model where people's willingness to finance a public good depends on their...

This paper examines the impact of the Asian crisis on bank stocks across four Western countries and six Asian countries. In the second half of 1997, Western banks experienced positive returns. In contrast East Asian bank indices incurred losses in excess of 60% in each of the crisis countries....

Could a high-access, quick-disbursing "insurance facility" in the IMF help to reduce the incidence of sharp interruptions in capital flows ("sudden stops")? We contribute to the debate on this question by analyzing the impact of conventional IMF-supported programs on the incidence of sudden...

To update a famous old statistic: a political leader in a developing country is almost twice as likely to lose office in the 6 months following a currency crash as otherwise. This difference, which is highly significant statistically, holds regardless whether the devaluation takes place in the...