We argue that econometric analyses based on transition countries’ data can be vulnerable to structural breaks across time and/or countries. We demonstrate this argument by identifying structural breaks in growth regressions estimated with data for 25 countries and 16 years. Our method allows...

We present a theory of ethnic conflict in which coalitions formed along ethnic lines compete for the economy’s resources. The role of ethnicity is to enforce coalition membership: in ethnically homogeneous societies members of the losing coalition can defect to the winners at low cost, and...

We extend the 'citizen candidate' model of party formation to allow for aggregate uncertainty over the distribution of preferenecs in order to address free entry in some earlier research on electoral competition with aggregate uncertainty with a fixed number of parties. We discuss and...

This paper analyses the underlying factors driving piracy off the coast of Somalia and examines the effectiveness of the international naval anti-piracy mission with respect to its declared aims. We show that while the navies perform well with respect to their short-term aims, they failed to...

The present paper explores the role of religious and social norms on a community’s access to public infrastructure. Distinguishing between social and physical infrastructure, we argue that investment in social infrastructural goods (e.g., health, education) could contribute to exchange both...

A well-known demographic feature in several East and South Asian countries is the continuing decline in the proportion of girls to boys. In India, till recently, the skewed sex ratio was treated as a Northern and Western Indian phenomenon. However, analysis of the 2001 Census shows that some of...

We study a model of political competition between two candidates with two orthogonal issues, where candidates are office motivated and committed to a particular position in one of the dimensions, while having the freedom to slect (credibly) any position on the other dimension. We analyse two...

If fertility reflects the choice of households, results of their choice (duration between successive births and health of the children) cannot be considered to be randomly determined. While most existing studies of child health tend to overlook the effects of fertility selection on child health,...

Using data for 1995, 1997 and 2001 and a sophisticated selectivity correction econometric methodology, this paper explores human capital allocation and returns in four labor market sectors in Bulgaria. Our results indicate that while in the aftermath of structural reform highly productive...

Recent Eurobarometer survey data are used to document and explain the stock of social capital in 28 European countries. Social capital in Central and Eastern Europe – measured by civic participation and access to social networks – lags behind that in Western European countries. Using...