There is a strong presumption among economists that domestic reforms are promoted by regionalism. Yet strong empirical evidence for this proposition is lacking. The purpose of the paper is to examine in some detail both the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence on this issue, drawing on...

We study a randomized Community Driven Reconstruction (CDR) intervention that provided two years of exposure to democratic practices in 1250 villages in eastern Congo. To assess its impact, we examine behavior in a village-level unconditional cash transfer project that distributed $1000 to 457...

Florian Dorn prepared this study during his doctoral studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich (LMU). The study was completed in September 2020 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics. This dissertation contributes to the empirics of public economics and...

Particular sets of institutions, once they become established in a society, have a strong tendency to persist. In this paper I argue that understanding how elites form and reproduce is key to understanding the persistence of institutions over time. I illustrate this idea with a simple political...

Florian Dorn erstellte diesen Beitrag während seines Promotionsstudiums an der Universität München (LMU). Die Studie wurde im September 2020 abgeschlossen und von der Fakultät für Volkswirtschaftslehre als Dissertation angenommen. Die Dissertation trägt zur Empirie der Ökonomie des...

Regional cooperation arrangements (RCAs) have produced vastly dissimilar performances; some have spurred remarkable expansion in trade and cooperation among members, while several others have achieved little. Studies show that performances vary because RCAs differ from one another in important...

The bulk of International Finance Corporation (IFC) lending benefits companies from rich countries, and projects in countries with middle income. Large conglomerates such as Lidl or Mövenpick have been among its direct beneficiaries. This contrasts to some extent with the IFC’s official...

Countries have pledged to stabilize global warming at a 1.5 to 2êC increase. Either target requires reaching net zero emissions before the end of the century, which implies a major transformation of the economic system. This paper reviews the literature on how policymakers can design climate...