This paper extends the North, Wallis, and Weingast (2009) framework for understanding the problems of development. Our approach distinguishes two development problems that are normally conflated. Most approaches to development focus on the second problem, namely, the transition of societies from...

I analyze the effects of ethnic divisions on the provision of public goods. Using OpenStreetMap data, I construct a new global dataset of locations of public amenities, such as schools, hospital and libraries. I allow for the possibility that the data may be systematically incomplete using two...

This paper presents a new global dataset on the geocode locations of public amenities, e.g., schools, hospitals or libraries, based on OpenStreetMap data. Volunteered geocoded information can be systematically incomplete; therefore, we develop and study two new proxies for the degree of...

In May 2016 the BRICS competition authorities signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which puts in place an Institutional Partnership between BRICS jurisdictions in the area of competition law through a general framework for multilateral cooperation. The paper takes stock of these recent...

We model political contestation over school language policy, within linguistic communities where weak property rights protection leads to high decentralized expropriation. We show that improvements in governance institutions that facilitate property rights protection might exacerbate such...

There is great variation in views on and treatment of minorities such as gay men across the world. We are the first to pinpoint what features of societies that are beneficial to gay men's quality of life by making use of a unique new cross-country dataset covering 110 countries, the Gay...

There is great variation in views on and treatment of minorities such as gay men across the world. We are the first to pinpoint what features of societies that are beneficial to gay men’s quality of life by making use of a unique new cross-country dataset covering 110 countries, the Gay...

This paper focuses on the impact of international migration on the transfer of political and social norms. Exploiting recent and unique data on Morocco, it explores whether households with return and current migrants bear different political preferences and behaviours than non-migrant families....

The purpose of the paper is to show that the nature of the relationship between governance and democracy varies depending on how the two terms (of a political discourse) are defined, that when the definition of one term encompasses distinctive features of the other we find that governance and...