Motivated by a recent setback in the fight against child malnutrition, this study explores whether aid projects help to reduce stunting, or impaired growth, among children in the local area. Focusing on Malawi, a country with very high stunting prevalence and for which we have access to...

Fairtrade labeling has the potential to increase market efficiency by connecting farmers to altruistic consumers who are willing to pay a premium for sustainability-certified products. A requirement for increased efficiency, though, is that the farmers' benefits are larger than the Fairtrade...

Motivated by the lack of sub-national empirical evidence on the relationship between aid and institutional development, this study explores the local effects of World Bank aid on perceived institutional quality in African aid receiving countries. We combine geo-referenced data on the subnational...

This paper carries out a critical reappraisal of the two contending theories purporting to explain long-run government spending: Wagner's Law and different variants of the ratchet effect. We analyze data spanning from the early 19th century until the present day in Sweden and the United Kingdom....

This paper carries out a critical reappraisal of the two contending theories purporting to explain long-run government spending: Wagner’s Law and different variants of the ratchet effect. We analyze data spanning from the early 19th century until the present day in Sweden and the United...