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 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...

This paper introduces quality of government rather than regime type as dependent variable in studies of the political effects of natural resources. It consists of two parts. First, it theorizes the role of fiscal dependency of oil and gas rents in relation to three different dimensions of...

In 1995, Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner found a negative relationship between natural resources and economic growth, and claimed that natural resources are a curse. Their work has been widely cited, with many economists now accepting the curse of natural resources as a welldocumented...

¿El Perú se escapará esta vez de “la maldición de los recursos naturales”? ¿Podrá usar los abundantes recursos que genera la minería hoy, para cerrar las brechas sociales y reorientar su economía para mañana? ¿Podrá limitar los impactos ambientales y sociales negativos, que las...

Understanding and minimizing the transaction costs of policy implementation are critical for reducing tropical forest losses. As the international community prepares to launch REDD+, a global initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from tropical deforestation, policymakers need to pay...

The goal of this paper is to investigate the relationship between type of welfare regimes and military expenditures. There is a sizeable empirical literature on the development of the welfare state and on the typology of the welfare regimes. There appear to be, however, no empirical studies that...

Previous empirical studies have found that the institutions and policies of democracies are generally more supportive of economic freedom than authoritarian political regimes. This paper employs a new dataset by Cheibub et al. (2010) to examine the impact of transitions to democracy on economic...

We examine the long-term links between state capacity and economic performance. Our database is novel and spans 11 countries and 4 centuries in Europe, the birthplace of modern economic growth. A dynamic simultaneous equation panel model indicates that the performance effects of states with...