The recent recovery in Latin America has been impressive but also raises the question whether this represents a fundamental break with the region's history of boom-bust cycles. The paper traces how this history of macroeconomic volatility and financial crisis over the past century has adversely...

Africa's interior-to-coast roads are well suited to export natural resources, but not to support regional trade. Are they the optimal response to geography and comparative advantage, or the result of suboptimal political distortions? We investigate the political determinants of road paving in...

Africa's interior-to-coast roads are well suited to export natural resources, but not to support regional trade. Are they the optimal response to geography and comparative advantage, or the result of suboptimal political distortions? We investigate the political determinants of road paving in...

Luisa Dörr prepared this study while she was working at the ifo Center for Public Finance and Political Economy. The study was completed in February 2022 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It consists of three distinct empirical essays...