Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) allow developing countries to trade some policy autonomy for improved access to internationally mobile capital. While the impact on capital flows is widely written about, BITs' impact on policymaking is typically studied more narrowly in the context of...

This paper investigates the impact of economic crises on income inequality. Important evidence has emerged that in the aftermath of crises politics becomes polarized and economists have linked this to greater differences in income due to crises. The evidence however on whether crises can be...

This paper argues that state weakness is broader than implied previously in the civil war literature, and that particular types of weakness in interaction with natural resources have aggravating or mitigating consequences for the risk of civil war. While in anocracies or unstable regimes natural...

This paper analyses the economic growth impact of organised political violence. First, we identify the various manifestations of political violence (riots, coups and civil war) and their risk of occurrence by using a multinomial model. Second, we use predicted probabilities of aggregate violence...

This paper argues that state weakness is broader than implied previously in the civil war literature, and that particular types of weakness in interaction with natural resources have aggravating or mitigating consequences for the risk of civil war. While in anocracies or unstable regimes natural...

This paper studies the political economy of realignments to fixed exchange rates and suggests that the use of realignments is less likely when there are political benefits from stable exchange rates and when linkages across other issue areas increase the costs of realignment. More specifically...

Research on central bank independence (CBI) focuses overwhelmingly on domestic causes and consequences. We consider CBI in relation to global finance. A first step links government decisions to reform central bank legislation to a perceived need to attract capital in the form of foreign direct...