This paper emphasizes that the evolution of religious institutions in Europe was influenced by the expansionary threat … rivals of a different affiliation. The overall patterns of conflict in continental Europe as well as those between the …

We study the effect of divisions within the elite on the probability of internal conflict in the Papal States between … the time of the election. We exploit this variation to analyze the causal effect of a divided conclave on conflict. We … find that an increase of one standard deviation in our measure of polarization raised the likelihood of internal conflict …

sociopolitical institutions because they (a) involve a strong degree of increasing returns to scale and the natural monopoly powers …

' persistent characteristics, such as their institutions. Among our findings are that macroeconomic policies affect development …

Of the 41 HIPCs, 11 are classified by the IMF and World Bank as conflict-affected. Can debt relief reduce the level of … violent conflict in these countries? By providing additional resources to finance broad-based public spending, debt relief … could help to redress the grievances that contribute to conflict. It could also reduce the ability of those motivated by …

Do legal institutions affect norms of cooperation? Using the introduction of the Code Napoleon during the Napoleonic … Wars in Germany as a historical experiment, I show that a positive shock to the quality of legal institutions can increase … be a potential mechanism for the relationship between legal institutions and social capital. …