Do aid projects affect citizens' motivation to pay taxes? We address this question by combining fine-grained data on aid projects from AidData and survey data from the Afrobarometer for 34 African countries. We first employ a subnational analysis, where the treatment varies by administrative...

Does exposure to aid projects affect citizens’ motivation to pay taxes? As a form of externally-led state building, foreign aid projects can affect citizens’ perceptions of their domestic institutions in unintended ways. We combine geo-coded data on World Bank aid projects and survey data...

We provide novel empirical models of the arms trade and focus on the role of energy dependence, in particular of oil, in explaining the trade of weapons between countries. Dramatic geopolitical events such as wars can cause significant disruptions in the supply of oil and increase oil prices....

We investigate the effect of economic sanctions on trade flows in countries sharing a border with sanctioned states. According to trade models, sanctions are expected to reduce trade flows as they disrupt established trading routes and economic relationships with suppliers and customers....