We model the State as a self-enforcing agreement over the use of force. A principal contracts with an agent, and a powerful ruler enforces their contracts through a mix of monetary fines and coercion. If the ruler fails to enforce, or if he uses his power to expropriate, all parties revert to...

Technology adoption in agriculture is one of the key factors of change in rural areas of developing countries. Large-scale in-migration by groups using a more advanced production technology often triggers such change in autochthone populations. We analyse the determinants of adoption of new...

We study short-run and long-run effects of a government subsidy to private nonprofit ownership of public good projects. In a simple model, we show that the subsidy increases the prices of project assets in the short run; however, the effect does not persist and prices decline in the long run....

The relationship between trade and foreign-policy goals has led to growing debates in the field of international economics and international relations. Most studies are cross-national and use interstate disputes to proxy the national security interests. We focus on the U.S., the world’s...

The last three decades have seen an important surge of the non-governmental sector in the provision of foreign aid. Using NGOs to deliver aid can be a solution to bypass corrupt authorities, avoiding that aid resources are captured by local elites. However NGOs may also act as surrogates for...

Population control policies keep on attracting massive attention: having more children would directly contribute to household’s poverty.Using household level data from Nepal, we investigate the links between household’s fertility decisions and variations in their size and composition. We...

In developing countries, most poor households experience extremely variable in-come because of a large exposure to climatic, economic and policy shocks, combined with a lack of appropriate insurance devices. Extreme weather events, in particular, are projected to become more frequent in a...

This article studies the effects of Behaviour-Based Price Discrimination (BBPD) in a horizontally and vertically differentiated duopoly. In a two-period model, firms are allowed to condition their pricing policies on the past purchase behaviour of consumers. The paper shows two different types...

The HIV/AIDS epidemic has dramatically altered patterns of morbidity and mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa with potential consequences on fertility and population dynamics. We take advantage of a unique data-set collected in Cameroon among HIV positive patients and estimate the relationship...

We model the choices of a monopolist who faces a partially uninformed population of consumers. She aims at expanding demand by exploiting his (limited) knowledge about consumers’ social network. She offers rewards to current clients in order to induce them to activate their social network and...