This paper studies political competition in the case of a democratization process. We present an illustrative model describing political competition when the opposition threatens the stability of the country. In some cases, our model predicts the government should invest in opposition districts...

The body of literature on purely democratic countries can sometimes fail to explain the behavior of government in semi-democratic African countries. Empirical and theoretical political economic papers find that public funds target ruling party supporters and swing districts. Our results,...

By applying regression discontinuity designs to a set of household surveys from the 1980–90s, we examine whether Côte d’Ivoire’s aggregate wealth was translated at the borders of neighboring countries. At the border of Ghana and at the end of the 1980s, large discontinuities are detected...

This article analyses the respective impact of aid, remittances and medical brain drain (MBD) on child mortality using panel and cross-country quintile-level data on respectively 84 and 46 developing countries. Our results show that remittances reduce child mortality while MBD increases it....

The paper addresses the issue of the accuracy of standard-of-living measurements using household survey data. First, it highlights the fact that lighter data collection processes in some developing countries have added to measurement errors in consumption and income aggregates measurement...

This paper estimates the long-run impact of a large income shock based on regional variations in the 1987–89 locust plague in Mali. We take comprehensive population census data to construct birth cohorts of individuals and compare those born and living in the years and villages affected by...

This paper analyses the impact of public infrastructure on the competitiveness and growth of the Senegalese economy within the framework of a computable general equilibrium model. Latreille and Varoudakis (1996) demonstrated, in partial equilibrium, that the absence of competitiveness within...

Why are there areas with persistenly low levels of income or consumption? This could result from the concentration of households with a low capital endowment or from variations in households’ environment. Peru is a country with a very much fragmented topography and climate, that combines dry...