In this study we resolve part of the confusion over how foreign aid affects armed conflict. We argue that aid shocks – severe decreases in aid revenues – inadvertently shift the domestic balance of power and potentially induce violence. During aid shocks, potential rebels gain bargaining...

The importance of international law has grown in an increasingly global world. States and their citizens are interconnected and depend on each other to enforce and comply with international law to meet common goals. Despite the expanding presence of international law, the question that remains...

The events of September 11 forever changed the political and legal response to terrorism. After more than ten years, two wars, several targeted military strikes, and significantly increased surveillance, we still have not succeeded in stopping the growth of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist...

Strategy research often aims to empirically establish a causal relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable such as firm performance. For many important strategy research questions, however, traditional empirical techniques are not sufficient to establish causal effects...

Seminal arguments in political economy hold that citizens will more readily demand accountability from governments for taxes than for non-tax revenue from oil or aid. Two identical experiments on large, representative subject pools in Ghana and Uganda probe the effects of different revenue types...

Strategy research often aims to empirically establish a causal relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable such as firm performance. For many important strategy research questions, however, traditional empirical techniques are not sufficient to establish causal effects...

What is the relationship between civil war and terrorism? Recent attempts to unpack the similarities between these types of political violence have either focused on creating actor-based categories (terrorists vs. insurgents) and elucidating the different reasons for being one or the other or...

Which actions by governments stoke or pacify an insurgency? Scholarly research on the topic has often been relegated to the study of this question at the country level, comparing across large units and rarely looking inside the state. Our research focuses on the primary actors in a contest for...