We study the role of proximity to historical ethnic borders in determining individual land ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa. Following an instrumental variable strategy, we document that individuals have a lower likelihood of owning land near historical ethnic borders. In particular, the...

We explore the effect of historical ethnic borders on contemporary conflict in Africa. We document that both the intensive and extensive margins of contemporary conflict are higher close to historical ethnic borders. Exploiting variations across artificial regions within an ethnicity's...

This paper presents new evidence on how demography affects democratic attitudes in Western democracies. Using individual survey responses, the empirical analysis disentangles age from cohort patterns and other contemporaneous economic and political influences that shape democratic attitudes. The...

Economists have recognized that ldquo;institutions matterrdquo; and the renewal of Institutional Economics has gained a large scientific authority, but institutions, as unit of analysis, stay a concept not understood on all its dimensions. Recently, a new concept appeared in the economic...

This paper examines the evolution in a few public institutions over time in India. It presents three types of evidence: on institutional outcomes (such as losses in power generation, backlogs in disposal of court cases); on perceptions-based measures of governance, some going back to the 1960s;...

The statement institutions matter has become commonplace. A precondition for it to be supported by empirical evidence, is, however, that institutions are measurable. Glaeser et al. (2004) attacks many studies claiming to prove the relevance of institutions for economic development as being based...

This paper contributes to the literature on the innovation effect of social trust by analyzing the mechanisms linking social trust and R&D Investments. High social trust level can ease firms' credit constraints by reducing moral hazards and information asymmetries problems which make raising...

This study captures the presence of organized crime groups in the Italian territories and examines their relationship to firms that are in a condition of financial distress. At the end of the nineteenth century the first criminal groups emerged in the South of Italy as a response to the demand...

We explore the effect of historical ethnic borders on contemporary non-civil conflict in Africa. Exploiting variations across artificial regions (i.e., grids of 50x50km) within an ethnicity's historical homeland, we document that both the intensive and extensive margins of contemporary conflict...

Migrant and migration policy (MMP) issues have often influenced important international business (IB) research questions, but the last 20 years have seen the emergence of new or “renewed” MMP issues tied to changes in migrant demographics, wealth, skills, home-country provenance,...