Do strong states affect the culture and actions of their citizens in a persistent way? And if so, can the capacity to tax, by itself, drive this effect? I study how the historical capacity of a state to collect taxes affects the decision of citizens to evade the mandatory military draft. I look...

The hallmark of the recent development and growth literature is a quest to identify institutions that explain a significant portion of the observed differences in living standards across countries. Empirical work in the area focuses almost exclusively on either the global sample or on developing...

Paper reviews India's growth performance since independence. Phrases suchas "Hindu Rate of Growth," sometimes make a telling comment and expose obscureeconomic data to a wider audience, but they can just as readily obscure reality byfocussing attention on the wrong issue. There is nothing in the...

Most post-communist economies are characterized by an initial collapse in aggregate output. Blanchard and Kremer (1997) and Roland and Verdier (1997) have recently modelled supply side distortions, disorganization in the links of production, that can lead to a short-term output contraction after...

The process of globalization causes an increasing intensity of institutional competition, i.e. competition among national suppliers of institutional arrangements for mobile factors. This often leads to the conclusion that the competence of national economic policy actors is decreasing. As a...

A common finding in the empirical civil war literature is that population size and per capita income are highly significant predictors of civil war incidence and onset. This paper shows that the common finding of population size and per capita income having a significant average effect on civil...

We provide evidence that a history of democracy at the local level is associated with contemporary democracy at the national level. Auxiliary estimates show that a tradition of local democracy is also associated with attitudes that favor democracy, with better quality institutions, and higher...

Corruption, which remains a serious problem in many countries, has prompted considerable research in recent years. This paper adds to the extant literature with insights on factors influencing corrupt activity. Using cross-country data for about 100 nations, the roles of national history,...

Industrialization has long been seen as the answer to underdevelopment and poverty. First this led countries to follow protectionist import substitution policies but as these failed developing countries have opened up to trade and FDI and tried to follow strategies of export driven...