In a seminal contribution, Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2001) argue property-rights institutions powerfully affect national income, using estimated mortality rates of early European settlers to instrument capital expropriation risk. However 36 of the 64 countries in their sample are assigned...

I address David Albouy's (2006) critique of the data constructed by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson (2001). The contribution of this paper is to instrument for settler mortality rates that are collected from historical sources - and that may be measured with error - with a...

I address David Albouy's (2006) critique of the data constructed by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson (2001). The contribution of this paper is to instrument for settler mortality rates that are collected from historical sources - and that may be measured with error - with a...

In this paper we provide empirical evidence of the complementarities between the geographical approach of Diamond (1997) and the institutional approach of Acemoglu et al. (2002) to explain gaps in economic performance worldwide since 11, 000 BC until today. While the biogeographical endowments...

This paper looks at the experience of South East Europe which -- for the purposes of this paper -- includes the former states of Yugoslavia except for Slovenia (i.e. Croatia, Serbia-Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia), Albania, and the two EU candidate countries, Bulgaria and Romania....

Economists are often skeptical concerning the economic effects of various forms of human rights: it has been argued that basic human rights can make the legal system less efficient but also that extensive social rights are incompatible with market economies. It is argued here that basic human...

This paper looks at the experience of South East Europe which – for the purposes of this paper – includes the former states of Yugoslavia except for Slovenia (i.e. Croatia, Serbia-Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia), Albania, and the two EU candidate countries, Bulgaria and...

It is the central thesis of this paper that imperialism retarded the development of human resources in lagging countries during the century ending in the 1950s. This result is established both theoretically and empirically. Controlling for other factors that might affect stocks of human capital...

This paper argues that the conflicts that afflicted the Western Balkan region in the 1990s pushed the countries into the European ‘super-periphery’, characterised by deindustrialisation and high unemployment, ethnic and regional fragmentation, political turmoil, and instability. Integration...

This paper looks at the experience of South East Europe which -- for the purposes of this paper -- includes the former states of Yugoslavia except for Slovenia (i.e. Croatia, Serbia-Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia), Albania, and the two EU candidate countries, Bulgaria and Romania....