The Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused disruptions in international trade and highlighted the dependency of small open economies in Europe on imports, especially of energy. These events may have changed Europeans' attitude towards globalization. We study two waves of representative...

This paper studies the origins and consequences of the Russian mafia (vory-v-zakone). I web scraped a unique dataset that contains detailed biographies of more than 5,000 mafia leaders operating in 15 countries of the (former) Soviet Union at some point between 1916 and 2017. Using this data, I...

Built mostly to support the early mining industry, the Cape Colony's railways reduced the cost of transport to the interior and increased labor productivity in the Colony from 1859 to 1905 by, we calculate, 30 percent. Little of the gains went to the state-owned company: the Cape parliament...

The G20 has emerged as a premier deliberative forum, involving leaders of some of the largest, systematically important countries of the world. Over the years, the G20 agenda has evolved to include pertinent issues for both developed countries and the emerging market economies. After the G20...

This study examines how the association between terrorism and capital flight affects the process of industrialisationin 36 African countries. The empirical evidence is based on Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) and Quantile Regressions (QR). GMM-oriented findings show that capital flight...

This paper contributes to the debate on the origins of modern economic growth in Europe from a very long-run perspective using econometric techniques that allow for a long-range dependence approach. Different regimes, defined by endogenously estimated structural shocks, coincided with episodes...

The origins of fiscal capacity have traditionally been linked to warfare and democratization. However, non-democratic states also invest in fiscal capacity, even in times of peace. In fact, the majority of income taxes-a cornerstone of government finance-were introduced by non-democratic states...

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused disruptions in international trade and highlighted the dependency of small open economies in Europe on imports, especially of energy. These events may have changed Europeans' attitude towards globalization. We study two waves of representative...

Persecution, pogroms, and genocide have plagued humanity for centuries, costing millions of lives and haunting survivors. Economists and economic historians have recently made new contributions to the understanding of these phenomena. We provide a novel conceptual framework which highlights the...

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused disruptions in international trade and highlighted the dependency of small open economies in Europe on imports, especially of energy. These events may have changed Europeans' attitude towards globalization. We study two waves of representative...