Autocrats experiencing a windfall in unearned income may find it optimal to donate to other countries some of the windfall in order to make the state a less attractive prize to potential insurgents. We put forward a model that makes that prediction, as well as the additional predictions that the...

We use highly disaggregated data on trade in capital goods to study differences in the price of capital across countries. This strategy is motivated by the fact that most countries import the bulk of machinery equipment from a small number of industrialized countries. We find the price of...

This paper uses Zambia as a case study to assess empirically whether political interference in a low-governance environment has diminished in the past years as expected after a semi-autonomous agency model was set up ten years ago. The road sector in Zambia has experienced some significant...

A broad consensus has emerged among practitioners and researchers that failure to build accountable and legitimate institutions is a critical risk factor associated with vicious circles of repeated violence. Despite this consensus, very few studies have tested the extent to which local...