This paper investigates the impact of foreign aid on the quality of institutions in recipient countries. Our identification strategy exploits the shift in US foreign policy due the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001 as a quasi-natural experiment. The associated change in...

Using a panel of naturalizations in U.S. states from 1965 to 2012, we empirically analyze the impact of elections on naturalization policy. Our results indicate that naturalization policy is (partly) driven by national elections: there are more naturalizations in presidential election years and...

Despite the recognition that asylum policies are partly determined by political economy factors in the destination country, there is little empirical evidence on the precise linkages between those political factors and asylum policies. We shed light on this issue by examining the impact of...