In 1500, Europe was composed of hundreds of statelets and principalities, with weak central authority, no monopoly over the legitimate use of violence, and multiple, overlapping levels of jurisdiction. By 1800, Europe had consolidated into a handful of powerful, centralized nation states. We...

Can infrastructure investment win "hearts and minds"? We analyze a famous case in the early stages of dictatorship – the building of the motorway network in Nazi Germany. The Autobahn was one of the most important projects of the Hitler government. It was intended to reduce unemployment, and...

Social capital – a dense network of associations facilitating cooperation within a community – typically leads to positive political and economic outcomes, as demonstrated by a large literature following Putnam. A growing literature emphasizes the potentially "dark side" of social capital....

Can infrastructure investment win “hearts and minds”? We analyze a famous case in the early stages of dictatorship – the building of the motorway network in Nazi Germany. The Autobahn was one of the most important projects of the Hitler government. It was intended to reduce unemployment,...

Can infrastructure investment win "hearts and minds"? We analyze a famous case in the early stages of dictatorship - the building of the motorway network in Nazi Germany. The Autobahn was one of the most important projects of the Hitler government. It was intended to reduce unemployment, and was...

Can infrastructure investment win "hearts and minds"? We analyze a famous case in the early stages of dictatorship - the building of the motorway network in Nazi Germany. The Autobahn was one of the most important projects of the Hitler government. It was intended to reduce unemployment, and was...

Trade disputes over national product standards are a growing source of tension in the international trading system. The usual pattern is that a country introduces a new product standard for all sales of a good in its local market, which is justified as necessary for consumer or environmental...

The story of Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours has often been described as one of success. The man was a well-known statesman, economist and entrepreneur in late eighteenth-century France and his main legacy, the famous and still thriving Du Pont company, suggests a brilliant trajectory. The aim...

The paper recounts the history of Saudi Arabia's first national oil company, Petromin, which was originally supposed to take the place of foreign-owned Aramco. As a result of Petromin's inefficiency and personal rivalries among the Saudi elite, however, Petromin was progressively relegated to...