Despite the Ethiopian government's commitment to attracting foreign direct investment to its emerging manufacturing sector and its shared interests with Chinese private businesses in building profitable investments, relations between Chinese private businesses and the Ethiopian government are...

In this paper, we argue that the Arab spring can be understood as a violent criticism of and attack against the post-Independence social contract that prevailed in most Middle East and North African countries. We show that this social contract, characterized by the combination of high levels of...

We investigate the informal influence of political leaders' spouses on the subnational allocation of foreign aid. Building new worldwide datasets on personal characteristics of political leaders and their spouses as well as on geocoded development aid projects (including new data on 19 Western...

This paper addresses the political economy background of import protection policy in Russia under the system of policy-making institutions developed during the period 1992–1997. Models explaining import penetration levels and import tariff rates are constructed and estimated independently as...

Import liberalization forms part and parcel of trade reforms in transition economies. There are, however, significant differences among post-communist countries in the degree of import liberalization. What factors govern the evolution of import tariff policy during the transition period? This...

When designing a trade policy reform, government of a transition country faces the problem of minimizing both trade distortions and losses in tariff revenues. One possible solution of this problem is tariff unification, which undermines stimuli for tariff evasion and thus saves budget revenues....

We investigate the informal influence of political leaders’ spouses on the subnational allocation of foreign aid. Building new worldwide datasets on personal characteristics of political leaders and their spouses as well as on geocoded development aid projects (including new data on 19...

Most people think of science and literature as distinct human endeavours. According to received convention, science is mostly about "mind", whereas literature is largely about "heart". Science, goes the argument, is by and large rational, literature primarily emotional. Science is about...

Production in the Innovation Economy emerges from several years of interdisciplinary research at MIT on the links between manufacturing and innovation in the United States and the world economy. (This ambitious research project is described in Making in America: From Innovation to Market, also...

Industrial policies, such as infrastructure investments and export tariffs, affect the allocation of labor and incomes across sectors, attracting substantial lobbying efforts by special interest groups. Yet, the link between structural change and lobbying remains underexplored. Using more than...