While the direct impact of geographic endowments on prosperity is present in all countries, in former colonies, geography has also affected colonization policies and, therefore, institutional outcomes. Using non-colonized countries as a control group, I develop an empirical strategy that...

Alfred Maizels' work on commodity trade and prices documented trends in a major area of international economic relations. This title elaborates the ideas in the tradition of Maizels' contributions, and discusses and extends these theories in relation to current problems

We theoretically and empirically examine the relationship between natural resource revenues and financial development. In the theoretical part, we present a politico-economic model in which contract enforcement is low and decreasing in resource revenues when political institutions are poor, but...