The remolding of the state from an autocratic to a democratic one in postwar Japan is sometimes regarded as a successful case of external intervention for state-building. When Americans landed in Japan two weeks after Japan's acceptance of unconditional surrender, they expected to meet a fanatic...

Acknowledgments -- Executive summary -- Overview -- Background and motivation -- Structure of the report and questions asked -- A profile of refugees -- Welfare and poverty -- Vulnerability -- Policies -- A comparative analysis across countries and data sets -- Appendix -- Conclusions -- References

Does democratization promote economic competition? This paper documents that the disruption of political connections associated with Suharto's fall had a modest pro-competitive effect on Indonesian manufacturing industries in which his family had extensive business interests. Firms with...

Traditionally, governments seek to mobilize tax revenues by expanding their enforcement of existing tax regimes and facilitating tax payments. However, enforcement and facilitation can be costly and produce diminishing marginal returns if citizens are unwilling to pay their taxes. This paper...

Robert B. Zoellick, President of the World Bank Group, charged that economics, and in particular development economics, must broaden the scope of the questions it asks - thereby also becoming more relevant to today's complex, multi-faceted problems. He discussed the following topics: (i) from...

What effect does democratization have on meritocratic practices in the civil service? Democratization increases performance incentives within the bureaucracy. This leads to more meritocracy for individuals with performance-enhancing characteristics, such as educational attainment, which...

Community-based natural resource management (CBRNM) aims to realize sustainable management of resources and improvements in livelihood. A central focus is the empowerment of indigenous and local communities through customary or devolved rights to common pool resources. Less attention is given to...

This paper explores the dynamics of media chatter about economic reforms using text analysis from about a billion newspaper articles in 28 languages. The paper shows that the intensity of reform chatter increases during economic downturns. This increase is more significant in democracies. Using...

A field experiment in rural Liberia is used to study democratic participation in fragile states. Fragile states are marked by political fragmentation, local patronage systems, and voter vulnerability. To understand the effects of such conditions on democratic expression through elections, the...