The Elite Quality Index for 2023 (EQx2023) measures 'The Sustainable Value Creation of Nations' and is the fourth annual publication of the internationally comparative ranking of countries. The index aim is to provide a unique dataset for academic research, original insight on the human and...

Can nations be ranked on the quality of their elites? Elites are dominant coalitions possessing the strongest coordination capacity over a country's key resources. They run the highest impact business models, which can be value creating or value extracting. We aim to produce a political economy...

Standard theoretical arguments suggest that republics ought to grow faster than monarchies and experience lower transitional costs following reforms. We employ a panel of 27 countries observed from 1820-2000 to explore whether regime types and institutional reforms have differential growth...

Supposedly well-intentioned dictators are often cited as drivers of economic growth. We examine this claim in a panel of 133 countries from 1858 to 2010. Using annual data on economic growth, political regimes, and political leaders, we document a robust asymmetric pattern: growth-positive...

The 2021 Elite Quality Index (EQx2021) is a global ranking of countries built on the notion of ‘elite quality’. Elite quality is a macro-level feature of the political economy that measures the value creation aggregate of all elite business models. Elites are dominant coalitions with the...

The Elite Quality Index for 2022 (EQx2022) is the third annual publication of the internationally comparative ranking of countries on ‘elite quality’. Its aim is to provide a unique dataset for academic research, original insight on the human and economic development trajectories of nations...

The present paper is part of unpublished book divided into three interrelated manuscripts that analyze the collapse of the Sudan. The theory introduced here is that the regime was built on kleptocratic framework. That enhanced a rapid transformation of the values' system of the country and...

Using hand-collected data on political contributions from undisclosed sources, we document novel stylized facts on "dark money" and its role in elections and politician type. Over the past decade, dark money has become a major source of campaign financing and currently comprises the largest...

Investor-State dispute settlement mechanisms (ISDS) are an important component of most International Investment Agreements (IIAs) and have significant influence on how disputes between States and investors are resolved. This statistical survey of a large sample of 1,660 bilateral investment...

Governments are facing an increasing number of arbitration claims by foreign investors relating to important public policies or seeking substantial damages, and many governments are taking a greater joint interest in how such cases are resolved in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). This...