Although the decisions of policy professionals are often more consequential than those of individuals in their private capacity, there is a dearth of studies on the biases of policy professionals: those who prepare and implement policy on behalf of elected politicians. Experiments conducted on a...

Data from the first five Demographic and Health Surveys to include HIV testing for a representative sample of the adult population are used to analyze the socioeconomic correlates of HIV infection and associated sexual behavior. Emerging from a wealth of country relevant results, some important...

The inability of political actors to make credible promises to broad segments of society--a previously unexplored determinant of civil war--causes both elected and unelected governments to pursue public policies that leave citizens worse off and more prone to revolt. Noncredible political actors...

The inability of political actors to make credible promises to broad segments of society—a previously unexplored determinant of civil war—causes both elected and unelected governments to pursue public policies that leave citizens worse off and more prone to revolt. Noncredible political...

We use a "natural experiment” in media markets in Benin to examine the impact of community radio on government responsiveness to citizens. Contrary to prior research on the impact of mass media, in this experiment government agents do not provide greater benefits to citizens whose exposure to...

This article introduces a large new cross-country database, the database of political institutions. It covers 177 countries over 21 years, 1975-95. The article presents the intuition, construction, and definitions of the different variables. Among the novel variables introduced are several...

Data from the first five Demographic and Health Surveys to include HIV testing for a representative sample of the adult population are used to analyze the socioeconomic correlates of HIV infection and associated sexual behavior. Emerging from a wealth of country relevant results, some important...