The notion that foreign aid harms the institutions of recipient governments remains prevalent. We combine new disaggregated aid data and various metrics of political institutions to re-examine this relationship. Long-run cross-section and alternative dynamic panel estimators show a small...

This paper develops a model of opportunistic behaviour in which an incumbent government resort to expansionary fiscal and/or monetary stimuli to foster economic growth and thus, maximize the probability of re-election. Using a panel dataset of 51 African countries covering the period 1980 to...

Developing countries that experience commodity booms struggle to mobilize sustainable tax revenues. Emerging literature on the subject notwithstanding, there is limited exploration of the specific types of institutions critical for improving fiscal capacity in resourcerich contexts. This paper...

This paper aims towards better understanding the role of entrepreneurship in fragile states, which despite the practical interest and relevance has been somewhat disregarded in academic research. Given the necessity to support policy formulation with appropriate and relevant measurement of...

States' fiscal capacity plays a pivotal role in developing economies, but it is less clear what its determinants are or what explains cross-country differences. We focus on the impact of natural resources. Standard arguments suggest that natural resources rents may reduce incentives to invest in...

Studies show that when exports go up, innovation goes up as well. But what is the mediating effect of domestic institutions in the association between exports and innovation? If any, which institutions are more likely to improve exports and innovation in developing countries, and how? To address...

Where does the money come from to buy votes? We argue that an important source of funds for vote-buying comes from 'contract clientelism', or the provision of public contracts to private firms in exchange for campaign donations. Using quantitative data on Colombian infrastructure contracts, we...

The paper explores the paths towards building institutional foundations for inclusive development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Viewing institutional configurations as a system of multiple equilibria, the concepts of endogenous institutions and institutional changes are used to address the question of...

Recent evidence from an exhaustive political economy study of growth of African economies- the growth project of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) suggests that 'policy syndromes' have substantially contributed to the generally poor growth in sub-Saharan Africa during...

To predict economic success and failure, academics and policymakers alike are interested in the differences in institutional structures across natural resource-based economies. This paper uses a political economy framework to examine the effect of institutional variables on per capita...