We use endogenous treatment-regression models to estimate the causal average treatment effect of US economic sanctions on four types of human rights. In contrast to previous studies, we find no support for adverse effects of sanctions on economic rights, political and civil rights, and basic...

This study investigates the case of Iran to evaluate how changes in the intensity of international sanctions affect internal conflict in the target country. Estimating a vector autoregressive model for the period between 2001q2 and 2020q3 with quarterly data on internal conflict and its three...

It is often conjectured that non-state dispute resolution blossoms when state courts are not independent or are perceived as low-quality courts. This conjecture implies a substitutive relationship between state and non-state dispute resolution. An alternative hypothesis argues that both the...

This paper analyzes whether nation-state governments can increase their credibility by becoming members of international organizations. Credibility is an important asset because it determines the real interest rate and is expected to have an important impact on investment and growth. It is...

Analysis of the economic effects of constitutional rules has made substantial progress over the last decade. This survey provides an overview of this rapidly growing research area and also discusses a number of methodological issues and identifies underresearched areas. It argues that the next...

This paper is based on the conjecture that institutional details matter and that attempts to estimate the economic effects of federalism by drawing on a simple dummy variable neglect potentially important institutional details. Based on a pricipal component analysis, seven aspects of both...

The economic effects of federalism are unclear: some papers find that federalism has strong positive effects on a number of economically relevant variables, others find negative effects. The results often crucially hinge upon the proxies for federalism used. In this paper, we critically survey...

The statement institutions matter has become commonplace. A precondition for it to be supported by empirical evidence, is, however, that institutions are measurable. Glaeser et al. (2004) attacks many studies claiming to prove the relevance of institutions for economic development as being based...

Legal philosophers like Montesquieu, Hegel and Tocqueville have argued that lay participation in judicial decision-making would have benefits reaching far beyond the realm of the legal system narrowly understood. From an economic point of view, lay participation in judicial decision-making can...

I argue that the rule of law consists of many dimensions and that much information is lost when variables proxying for these dimensions are simply aggregated. I draw on the most important innovations from various legal traditions to propose a concept of the rule of law likely to find general...