To explain the rise in Afghan opium production, we explore how rising conflicts change the incentives of farmers. Conflicts make illegal opportunities more profitable as they increase the perceived lawlessness and destroy infrastructure crucial to alternative crops. Exploiting a unique data set,...

Advanced economies have a longer history of leveraging fiscal policy to address inequality relative to developing Asia. We examine the country experiences of the Nordic countries, France, Japan, and the US, to draw lessons for developing Asia in its relatively new quest to use fiscal policy to...

Advanced economies have a longer history of leveraging fiscal policy to address inequality relative to developing Asia. We examine the country experiences of the Nordic countries, France, Japan, and the US, to draw lessons for developing Asia in its relatively new quest to use fiscal policy to...

No voters cast their votes based on perfect information, but better educated and richer voters are on average better informed than others. We develop a model where the voting mistakes resulting from low political knowledge reduce the weight of poor voters, and cause parties to choose political...

In public good games, voluntary contributions tend to start o high and decline as the game is repeated. If high contributors are matched, however, contributions tend to stay high. We propose a formalization predicting that high contributors will selfselect into groups committed to charitable...

We report results from a dictator game experiment with nurse students and real estate broker students as dictators, and Amnesty International as the recipient. Although brokers contributed substantial amounts, nurses contributed significantly more, on average 76 percent of their endowment. In a...