The dominant hypothesis in the literature that studies conflict is that poverty is the main cause of civil wars. We instead analyze the effect of institutions on civil war, controlling for income per capita. In our set up, institutions are endogenous and colonial origins affect civil wars...

Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. The Earliest Americans -- Chapter 3. The Development of European Colonies -- Chapter 4. The Revolution -- Chapter 5. Focus on Economists: Adam Smith, Ricardo, von Thünen, and Dupuit -- Chapter 6. The Third Founding Document and the Land Deals That Created...

The study attempts to highlight the interrelation between three central points in the ongoing debate on the political economy of development: viability, surplus, and class-formation. A case study of the development of rural labour systems in Northern Nigeria is meant to provide both a better...

This paper assesses the role of ideas in economic change, combining economic and historical analysis with insights from psychology, sociology and anthropology. Belief systems shape the system of categories ("pre-confirmatory bias") and perceptions (confirmatory bias), and are themselves...