This paper examines the long-term health impact of Agent Orange, a toxic military herbicide containing dioxin that was used extensively during the U.S.-Vietnam war in the 1960-70s. Using a nationally representative health survey and an instrumental variable approach that addresses the potential...

Using a unique pairing of household survey data and geolocational conflict data, we investigate the relationship between local conflict intensity and the disciplinary methods employed by Iraqi households. We find that parents in high-conflict areas are more likely to use both moderate and severe...

To address security concerns, governments often implement trade barriers and restrictions on the movement of goods and people. These restrictions have negative economic consequences, possibly increasing the supply of political violence. To test this hypothesis, we exploit the restrictions...

We analyze individual satisfaction with life as a whole and satisfaction with the personal financial situation for Israeli citizens of Jewish and Arab descent. Our data set is the Israeli Social Survey (2006). We are especially interested in the impact of the religions Judaism, Islam and...

This study analyzes mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) victim data in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq during the period of the 1960s to 2005. In addition to descriptive analysis of the data, we use regression analysis to identify the determinants of the probability of getting killed by a mine or...

Despite being a fixture of everyday life in the Arab world, wasta, which may be thought of as special influence by members of the same group or tribe, has received little attention from social scientists. Our casual empiricism suggests that wasta is an important determinant of how economic...

This paper investigates the impact of agricultural trade liberalization on economic activity and political violence in emerging countries. We use data on all Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) signed between 25 low- and middle-income countries and their high-income trade partners between 1995...

This paper analyzes time-sensitive data on a humanitarian crisis in the Middle East. It aims to assess the impact of the steep influx of Syrian refugees into Jordan on the country's labor market since the onset of the conflict in Syria (March 2011). As of August 2014, nearly 3 million registered...

We examine how political participation and political competition are shaped by two class-based extensions of the franchise in 20th-century India. Creating a new dataset of district level political outcomes between 1921 and 1957, we find that the partial franchise extension of 1935 resulted in...

Few studies have examined the "echo effect" of early-life shocks related to prenatal malnutrition, that is, whether the legacy of such shocks is transmitted to the next generation. This study addresses this gap by leveraging extreme malnutrition during the Great Leap Forward famine in China, and...