For a generation, political science has been dominated by the analysis of interests within the framework of rational choice. Although this has enabled major advances, it struggles to provide a plausible analysis of many instances of sociopolitical dysfunction. This article reviews recent...

Developing countries frequently face large adverse shocks to their economies. We study two distinct types of such shocks: large declines in the price of a country's commodity exports and severe natural disasters. Unsurprisingly, adverse shocks reduce the short-term growth of constant-price GDP...

Rapid decolonization created many arbitrary countries. In contrast to those states which had emerged through a quasi-Darwinian process of selection, some of these new countries had structural characteristics which gravely impeded the provision of public goods. Their lack of a unifying sense of...

Those low-income countries that export non-agricultural commodities are in the midst of a resource transfer. It is undoubtedly the biggest opportunity for transformative development that these societies have experienced, dwarfing both aid and previous commodity booms. To get it in proportion, in...

This paper investigates the role of aid in mitigating the adverse effects of commodity export price shocks on growth in commodity-dependent countries. Using a large cross-country dataset, we find that negative shocks matter for short-term growth, while the ex ante risk of shocks does not seem to...

Building on widespread economic reforms in the early 1990s, Tanzania has recorded steady economic growth over the last two decades, despite the downturn in global economic fortunes since 2008. The process of reform is continuous, however, and the challenge facing the current generation of...

"The study of natural resource extraction in resource-rich countries often shows that plunder, rather than prosperity, has become the norm. Management of natural resources differs widely in every state; a close examination of the decision-making chains in various states highlights the key...