Recently, convincing evidence has been presented that the recession in the wake of the recent financial crisis resulted primarily from an overly levered housing sector that was forced to deleverage and cut consumption spending when faced with collapsing housing prices. Following this...

We study how natural-resource rents affect the risk of internal conflict within countries and how the federal structure of countries influences this relationship. Natural-resource abundance may induce excessive rent-seeking and thus increase the risk of internal conflict. Fiscal and political...

This paper examines whether the degree of fiscal decentralization in aid-receiving countries matters in explaining aid effectiveness. The decentralization theorem predicts that the devolution of powers should increase aid effectiveness, since local decision-makers are better informed about local...