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...

We examine the effects that international commodity price shocks have on external debt using panel data for a world sample of 93 countries spanning the period 1970-2007. Our main finding is that positive commodity price shocks lead to a significant reduction in the level of external debt in...

We use annual variation in rainfall to examine the effects that exogenous, transitory income shocks have on remittances in a panel of 42 Sub-Saharan African countries during the period 1960-2007. Our main finding is that these income shocks have a significant positive effect on remittances, but...

We examine the effect that revenue windfalls from international commodity price shocks have on sovereign bond spreads using panel data for 30 emerging market economies during the period 1997-2007. Our main finding is that positive commodity price shocks lead to a significant reduction in the...

This paper examines the effect 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...

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...

To what extent has Sub-Saharan Africa’s slow economic growth over the past five decades been due to price and trade policies that discouraged production of agricultural relative to non-agricultural tradables? This paper uses a new set of estimates of policy induced distortions to relative...

A new set of estimates of policy induced distortions to relative prices is used to examine how they affect economic growth. We find that on impact there is no significant response of relative agricultural price distortions to changes in real GDP per capita growth of Sub-Saharan African...

According to the economic approach to political transitions, transitory negative economic shocks can open a window of opportunity for democratic improvement. Testing the theory requires a source of transitory shocks to the aggregate economy. We use rainfall shocks in Sub-Saharan African...

To learn more about the effect of economic conditions on civil war, we examine whether Sub-Saharan civil wars are more likely to start following downturns in the international price of countries’ main export commodities. The data show a robust effect of commodity price downturns...