This paper builds an analytical framework that models predation (banditry) and production as part of the choice of a rational utility-maximising agent. Aggregating this choice up for society produces equilibrium outcomes ranging from Utopia (where no one predates) to Amorphy (where everyone...

This essay reviews important demographic trends expected to occur between 2010 and 2050, indicates some of their implications for economic and global development, and suggests some possible policies to respond these trends and implications. The century from 1950 to 2050 will have witnessed the...

This paper argues that the conflicting results in the voluminous recent literature on inequality and growth are missing the big picture on inequality and long-run economic development. Consistent with the provocative hypothesis of Engerman and Sokoloff 1997 and Sokoloff and Engerman 2000, this...

Can brief, foreign-funded efforts to build local institutions have positive effects on local patterns of governance, cooperation, and well-being? Prior research suggests that such small-scale, externally driven interventions are unlikely to substantially alter patterns of social interaction in a...

There is growing clamor in industrial countries for additional border taxes on imports from countries with lower carbon prices. A key factor affecting the impact of these taxes is whether they are based on the carbon content of imports or the carbon content in domestic production. Our...

Ghana can be considered a relative success story in Africa. We cite six variables - peace and stability, democracy and governance, control of corruption, macroeconomic management, poverty reduction, and signs of an emerging social contract - to suggest the country’s admirable political and...

The political economy of aid agencies is driven by incomplete information and multiple competing objectives and confounded by principal-agent and collective-action problems. Policies to improve aid rely too much on a planning paradigm that tries to ignore, rather than change, the political...

Does economic development depend on geographic endowments like temperate instead of tropical location, the ecological conditions shaping diseases, or an environment good for grains or certain cash crops? Or do these endowments of tropics, germs, and crops affect economic development only through...

The world rice market was aflame last spring and for several months it looked as if the trading edifice that had exhibited such resilience over the last two decades was going to burn to the ground. World prices trebled within less than four months and reached a 30-year inflation-adjusted high....

The role of regulatory barriers in inhibiting entrepreneurship, investment and employment creation is an old topic in economics. This study utilizes a five-year panel of data on regulations and procedures from the World Bank's Doing Business project, along with Arellano-Bond dynamic panel...