This paper investigates how the institutional setting for protection of creditor rights affects bank lending and risk-taking. An analytical model is specified to underpin banks‟ portfolio decisions, between loans and other earning assets such as government securities. The model is augmented...

Recent empirical studies on agricultural productivity growth in African countries have produced mixed results; some find that uptake of new technology (technical progress) is the main source of total factor productivity growth while others point to improved use of existing technology (efficiency...

We study from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective how a network of military alliances and enmities affects the intensity of a conflict. The model combines elements from network theory and from the politico-economic theory of conflict. We postulate a Tullock contest success function...

The colonial legacy of African underdevelopment is widely debated but hard to document. We use occupational statistics from Protestant marriage registers of historical Kampala to investigate the hypothesis that African gender inequality and female disempowerment are rooted in colonial times. We...

The West African state of Côte d’Ivoire has an area of 322,465 square kilometers, with a coastline of 540 kilometers along the Gulf of Guinea. It shares borders with Liberia in the southwest, Guinea in the northwest, Mali and Burkina Faso in the north, and Ghana in the east. The southern part...