Over the past two decades immigration enforcement has grown exponentially in the United States. We exploit the geographical and temporal variation in a novel index of the intensity of immigration enforcement between 2005 and 2011 to show how the average yearly increase in interior immigration...

In this paper we use novel historical data on economics and social rights from the constitutions of 201 countries and an instrument variable strategy to answer two important questions. First, do economic and social rights provisions in constitutions reduce poverty? Second, does the strength of...

The mahr, a contract negotiated upon an Islamic marriage payable to the wife, has the potential to help alleviate the “feminization of poverty” attendant upon marriage dissolution. In North America, courts have sometimes given legal force to the mahr through the contexts of marriage...

Crime and violence impede development and disproportionally impact poor people in many countries across the world. Though crime and violence represent serious problems in many countries, less-developed countries experience particular concentrations, especially those that are characterized by...