Indonesia’s 1999 decentralization law gave local governments in Indonesia an unprecedented opportunity to adopt pro-development policies. We estimate the effect of decentralization (enacted in 2001) on national economic performance using a synthetic case control methodology. Our results...

Why do policies often seem to converge across countries at the same time? This question has been studied extensively in the diffusion literature. However, past research has not examined complex choice environments, especially where there are many alternatives. My paper aims to fill this gap in...

The degree to which governments intervene to contain financial crises varies considerably. We aim to understand why policymakers choose the level of intervention they do to contain financial shocks. In particular, we want to understand why policymakers may choose policies that create outcomes...

How do elections affect the costliness of financial crises to taxpayers? Previous research contends that more electorally competitive countries choose policies less costly to taxpayers. In this paper, we update Keefer's seminal 2007 article published in International Organization with new data....

How do markets discipline governments? The most direct way is through sovereign borrowing costs. Investors charge more interest when they anticipate that the risks of default increase. Where markets get their information from and how they use this information, however, is not well documented. In...

Multi-party elected national legislatures should be venues for peacefully resolving conflicts be- tween opposing groups. However, they can become scenes of physical violence. Such violence is an indication that a country's legislative institutions are functioning far from perfectly as...