We study the effects of economic shocks on civil conflict at the subnational level using a panel dataset of 5689 administrative regions from 53 African countries with yearly observations from 1992 to 2010. We find that economic shocks, measured by nighttime light intensity and instrumented by...

We investigate the prevalence and determinants of ethnic favoritism, i.e., preferential public policies targeted at the political leader’s ethnic group. We construct a panel dataset of 2,022 ethnographic regions from 139 countries with annual observations from 1992 to 2012, and use nighttime...

This paper discusses the problem of crowding out of insurance by co-existing governmental relief programs—the so-called ‘charity hazard’—in the context of different institutional schemes of governmental disaster relief in Austria and Germany. We test empirically whether an assured...

Using a unique dataset of insurance decisions by over 1,800 large U.S. corporations, this study provides the first empirical analysis of firm behavior that compares corporate demand for property and catastrophe insurance (here, terrorism). We combine demand and supply data and apply a...

Since the passage of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002, corporate terrorism insurance is sold as a separate policy from commercial property coverage. In this paper, we determine whether companies differ in their demand for property and terrorism insurance. Using a unique dataset of...

This timely book deploys new tools and measures to understand how global production networks change the nature of global economic interdependence, and how that in turn changes our understanding of which policies are appropriate in this new environment. Bringing to bear an array of the latest...

This paper develops a simple model that analyses the relationship between a country?s oil endowment and the duration of its autocratic leader. The dictator uses the rents from oil extraction for both personal gain and to pay-off potential opposition and chooses an optimal level of oil...