In this paper we incorporate interdisciplinary New Institutional and Transaction Costs Economics (combining Economics, Organization, Law, Sociology, Behavioral and Political Sciences), and suggest a framework for analysis of mechanisms of governance of agro-ecosystem services. Firstly, we...

Several scholars have argued that abundant natural resources can be harmful to economic performance under bad institutions and helpful when institutions are good. These arguments have either been theoretical or based on naturally-occurring variation in natural resource wealth. We test this...

This paper re-examines the effect of oil wealth on political violence. Using a unique historical panel dataset of oil discoveries, we show that simply controlling for country fixed effects removes the statistical association between the value of oil reserves and civil war onset. Other...

A large literature investigates the relation between oil and conflict, yet no empirical study has found any link between oil and coups d’´etat. Using a new data set on oil production separated into onshore and offshore production, and covering 172 countries from 1900 to 2012, onshore oil is...

In the tropics, land transactions remain today carried out within the framework of custom and therefore constitute uncompleted sales, which it is often argued hinders investment and rural economic resilience. The Ivory Coast is no exception to the rule. Nevertheless, the absence of proper land...

¿El Perú se escapará esta vez de “la maldición de los recursos naturales”? ¿Podrá usar los abundantes recursos que genera la minería hoy, para cerrar las brechas sociales y reorientar su economía para mañana? ¿Podrá limitar los impactos ambientales y sociales negativos, que las...

Do food prices cause political unrest? Throughout history, riots appear to have frequently broken out as a consequence of high food prices. This paper studies the impact of food prices on political unrest using monthly data on food prices at the international level. Because food prices and...

We study the effect of U.S. food aid on conflict in recipient countries. Our analysis exploits time variation in food aid shipments due to changes in U.S. wheat production and cross-sectional variation in a country's tendency to receive any U.S. food aid. According to our estimates, an increase...