Citizens have long taken to the streets to demand change, expressing political views that may otherwise be suppressed. Protests have produced change at local, national, and international scales, including spectacular moments of political and social transformation. We document five new empirical...

This article examines patterns of entry and exit in a relatively homogeneous product market to investigate the impact of entry on incumbent firms and market structure. In particular, we are interested in whether the organizational form of entrants matters for the competitive decisions of...

We provide the planner's solution to a model where households learn from exogenous natural disaster arrivals about arrival rates and spend to mitigate future damages. Mitigation cannot be decentralized due to positive externalities from curtailing aggregate risks. First-best can be implemented...

Aging populations in advanced economies are placing ever-increasing demands on government spending in the form of old-age benefits. Economies that have promised substantially more benefits than they have made provision to finance are heading into a prolonged era of fiscal stress. Unresolved...

International environment and development agencies increasingly emphasize external cofinancing when selecting projects to fund. This paper considers whether the emphasis on cofinancing helps promote institutional objectives, or creates perverse and inefficient incentives. We present a model of...

We examine the effects of Fair Trade (FT) certification of coffee on producers and households in Costa Rica. Examining the production dynamics of the universe of Costa Rican coffee mills from 1999-2014, we find that FT certification is associated with a higher sales price, greater sales, and...

Fair Trade is a labeling initiative aimed at improving the lives of the poor in developing countries by offering better terms to producers and helping them to organize. In this survey, we provide a critical overview of the economic theory behind Fair Trade, describing the potential benefits and...

Sparked by the killing of George Floyd in police custody, the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests have brought a new wave of attention to the issue of inequality within criminal justice. However, many public health officials have warned that mass protests could lead to a reduction in social...

In elections that take place in a less-than-perfect democracy, incumbency advantages are different from those in mature democracies. The incumbent can prevent credible challengers from running, organize vote fraud, or even physically eliminate his main opponents. At the same time, formally...