We examine the effects that variations in the international food prices have on democracy and intra-state conflict using panel data for over 120 countries during the period 1970-2007. Our main finding is that in Low Income Countries increases in the international food prices lead to a...

This paper examines the effects that windfalls from international commodity price booms have on net foreign assets in a panel of 145 countries during the period 1970-2007. The main finding is that windfalls from international commodity price booms lead to a significant increase in net foreign...

I examine the relationship between democracy and the perceived risk of corruption in a panel of 130 countries. My panel model controls for country fixed effects and enables the estimation of a within-country relationship between democracy and corruption. My main finding is that democracy...

I estimate the effect that growth in countries' GDP per capita has on the growth rate of infrastructure. In order to extract exogenous variation in GDP per capita growth, I use the growth of the international oil price multiplied with countries' GDP shares of oil net-exports as an instrumental...

Military expenditures significantly affect the relationship between the risk of civil conflict outbreak and natural resources. We show that a significant positive effect of natural resource rents on the risk of civil conflict outbreak is limited to countries with low military expenditures. In...

Do populations grow as countries become richer? In this paper we estimate the effects on population growth of shocks to national income that are plausibly exogenous and unlikely to be driven by technological change. For a panel of over 139 countries spanning the period 1960-2007 we interact...

A common finding in the empirical civil war literature is that population size and per capita income are highly significant predictors of civil war incidence and onset. This paper shows that the common finding of population size and per capita income having a significant average effect on civil...

This paper explores the link between exports and total factor productivity (TFP) in Brazilian manufacturing firms over the period 2000-2008. The Brazilian experience is instructive as it is a case of an economy that expanded aggregate exports significantly, but with stagnant aggregate TFP...

Mexican wage inequality rose following Mexico's accession to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization in 1986. Since the mid-1990s, however, wage inequality has been falling. Since most trade models suggest that output prices can affect factor prices, this paper...

The returns to schooling and the skill premium are key parameters in various elds and policy debates, including the literatures on globalization and inequality, international migration, and technological change. This paper explores the skill premium and its correlation with exports in Latin...