In Africa, boundaries delineated during the colonial era now divide young independent states. By applying regression discontinuity designs to a large set of surveys covering the 1986-2001 period, this paper identifies many large and significant jumps in welfare at the borders between five...

A monopolist sells goods with possibly a characteristic consumers dislike (for instance, he sells random goods to risk averse agents), which does not affect the production costs. We investigate the question whether using undesirable goods is profitable to the seller. We prove that in general...

Given the low condom use and high prevalence in some African countries, this paper addresses the question of whether these evidences are driven by a supply-side or a demandside issue. The role of road infrastructures on HIV/AIDS outcomes is investigated using data from the Demographic and Health...

This paper empirically analyzes the influence of road proximity on HIV- infection using geographical data on road infrastructure and the Demographic and Health Surveys collected in six African countries. Firstly we show that living in proximity to a major road increases the individual risk of...

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...

Our study focuses on the EU new members, which are transition countries. After a long period of privatization and restructuring, the ownership structure of firms in these countries takes a clearer form. This evolution of ownership structure has a considerable effect on firm performance. In using...

When European powers partitioned Africa, individuals of otherwise homogeneous communities were divided and found themselves randomly assigned to one coloniser. This provides for a natural experiment: applying a border discontinuity analysis to Ghana and Togo, we test what impact coloniser’s...

Several similarities explain the spread of the Arab revolutionary process : the polarization of economies to limited sectors, a rentier-based management of resources, very low employment rates and extremely high rates of skilled migration. Finally, a similar external pact with the Western...

This paper investigates the impact of complementarity reforms on growth and how it depends on GDP per capita. Based on reform data for six policy areas compiled from various sources during the period 1994-2006 for over 100 countries, we compute composite indicators of reform level and...