Transnational crime brings substantial foreign capital into a number of fragile and developing states. Yet the economic and political impacts of such capital have rarely been studied due to the challenges of obtaining accurate data on illicit activities. We overcome this challenge by compiling a...

In recent years pirate attacks have been increasing in both cost and number. Despite much speculation, there are few empirically tested theories of why we see this variation in attacks. Using an original data-set of over three thousand piracy attacks over the last decade, as well as micro-level...

Does foreign aid shift public spending? Many worry that aid will be "fungible'' in the sense that governments reallocate public funds in response to aid. If so, this could undermine development, increase the poorest's dependency on donors, and free resources for patronage. Yet, there is little...

The People's Action Party (PAP) of Singapore is one of the world's longest ruling dominant parties, having won every general election since the country's independence in 1965. Why do Singaporeans consistently vote for the PAP, contrary to the expectations of theories of democratization? We argue...

Although the mortality and incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD) in England and Wales has declined in recent years, an ageing population has contributed to keeping the prevalence of CHD largely unchanged. Evidence suggests that revascularisation procedures have contributed not only to this...

Decades of dominant party rule in Malaysia unexpectedly ended when UMNO and its Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition lost the 2018 election despite extensive electoral manipulations, including new electoral boundaries designed to produce a BN victory in defiance of flagging popular support. We use...

How can national level leaders get local officials to engage in costly effort to mitigate the environmental costs of economic growth? Conventional wisdom holds that where the effort of local officials is unobservable, national level leaders can link the promotion of local officials with their...

Do well-informed politicians make more effective public spending decisions? In experiments with almost all (N=460) elected politicians in Malawi, we tested the effects of information on public spending by providing information about school needs, foreign aid and voting prior to real spending...

Did foreign aid impede or catalyze democratization in Africa in the 1990s? We argue that after the Cold War, donors increased their use of technical assistance in aid packages, improving their monitoring capacity and thus reducing autocrats’ ability to use aid for patronage. To remain in...