This paper theoretically assesses the role that uncertainty plays in the intensity of conflicts. The standard two-player rent-seeking contest model (Tullock, 1980) is extended to allow for privately known subjective values of the prize. The conflict is modeled as a Bayesian game on which each...

Using Facebook's release in a given language as an exogenous source of variation in access to social media where the language is spoken, we show that Facebook has had a significant and sizable positive impact on citizen protests. By exploiting variation in a large sample of countries during...

This paper studies the effects of disclosing information about politician misbehavior on trust in public institutions. I use news bulletins from the main anti-corruption agency in Colombia announcing disciplinary prosecutions against municipal mayors. I exploit the timing of the bulletin's...

Spanish Abstract: ¿Pueden los medios determinar el éxito o fracaso de las reformas institucionales? Estudiamos la adopción del voto secreto en los Estados Unidos y el papel de los medios de comunicación en este paso crucial para mejorar la democracia. Utilizando una estrategia de...

Civilian displacement is a common phenomenon in developing countries confronted with internal conflict. While displacement directly affects forced migrants, it also contributes to deteriorating labor conditions of vulnerable groups in receiving communities. For the displaced population, the...

This article highlights a nefarious effect of elections during civil wars by demonstrating that they can facilitate the displacement of civilians. This occurs through two main mechanisms: they reveal information about civilians' loyalties directly to armed groups; and they threaten the status...

This paper develops a simple model of the war against illegal drugs in producer and consumer countries. Our analysis shows how the equilibrium quantity of illegal drugs, as well as their price, depends on key parameters of the model, among them the price elasticity of demand, and the...

Spanish Abstract: Este artículo investiga la relación entre el despojo de tierras a los campesinos y el origen del conflicto civil en Colombia. Usando un enfoque de variables instrumentales con efectos fijos de pares de vecinos mostramos que el despojo histórico de las tierras de los...