Social scientists are increasingly engaging in experimental research projects of importance for public policy in developing areas. While this research holds the possibility of producing major social benefits, it may also involve manipulating populations, often without consent, sometimes with...

We study a version of a canonical model of attacks against political regimes where agents have an expressive utility for taking political stances that is scaled by the salience of political decision-making. Increases in political salience can have divergent effects on regime stability depending...

A large and growing literature links high levels of ethnic diversity to low levels of public goods provision. Yet while the empirical connection between ethnic heterogeneity and the underprovision of public goods is widely accepted, there is little consensus on the specific mechanisms through...

Social scientists are increasingly engaging in experimental research projects of importance for public policy in developing areas. While this research holds the possibility of producing major social benefits, it may also involve manipulating populations, often without consent, sometimes with...

Social scientists are increasingly engaging in experimental research projects of importance for public policy in developing areas. While this research holds the possibility of producing major social benefits, it may also involve manipulating populations,

Policy makers and academics now realize that understanding or promoting economic development requires an understanding of the economic causes of conflict and the structures of war economies. This essay provides a critical survey of recent quantitative work that addresses these themes ; it uses...

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...

Since 1989, international efforts to end protracted conflicts in Africa, Latin America, and Asia have included sustained investments in the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of combatants from the warring parties. Yet, while policy analysts have debated the organizational...