This brief paper summarizes results from an analysis of the World Development Report (WDR) homicide dataset (February 24, 2010), which is based primarily on estimates from the United Nations Office against Drugs and Crime (UNODC), with some changes or additions from national sources and the...

Supports the view that low-income countries have a greater risk of violent conflict due to poor governance and weak institutions. Some have argued for a direct causal effect via a country's labor market, but a major obstacle to assessing these arguments has been the lack of direct measures of...

We examine a public goods game in 83 communities in northern Liberia. Women contributed substantially more to a small-scale development project when playing with other women than in mixed-gender groups, where they contributed at about the same levels as men. We try to explain this composition...

If democracy is to have the good effects said to justify it, it must be self-enforcing in that incumbents choose to hold regular, competitive elections and comply with the results. I consider models of electoral accountability that allow rulers a choice of whether to hold elections and citizens...

The author distinguishes between two types of costly signals that state leaders might employ in trying to credibly communicate their foreign policy interests to other states, whether in the realm of grand strategy or crisis diplomacy. Leaders might either (a) tie hands by creating audience costs...

Conventional wisdom holds that in international disputes, a state's military threast are more likely to work the more the state is favored by the balance of power or the balance of interests. Analysis of a game-theoretic model of crisis signaling substantially refines and revises this claim. Due...