The new paradigm in the field of International Cooperation is that institutions are the fundamental cause of long-run economic development. However, the lack of both a clear consensus on which are the specific institutions that promote development, and a theory that integrates economic,...

This study reconsiders the narrow corridor proposed by Acemoglu and Robinson (2017) in an attempt to discover any underlying empirical patterns. Mainly building upon Murphy and O’Reilly (2022, 2023) we first replicate their findings. Afterwards we devise some sub-corridors by dividing the...

This paper empirically examines the causality between crime rates and economic growth using state level data in India. A reduced form equation has been estimated using instrumental variable approach to correct for joint endogeneity between crime and economic growth. Higher crimes may reduce...

This paper studies political accountability under various contractual forms of Public Private Partnerships. A critical aspect of any PPP contract is the allocation of demand risk between the public authority and the private provider. We show that contracts in which the private provider bears all...

Service adaptations, when there is changing demand or problems regarding the service provision, constitute a major issue in Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). So far, studies have explained the ex post adaptation problems by the distorted incentives for the private public-service provider to...

We explore the effect of historical ethnic borders on contemporary conflict in Africa. We document that the intensive and extensive margins of contemporary conflict are higher close to historical ethnic borders. Exploiting variations across artificial regions within an ethnicity's historical...

This paper compares more direct measures of the institutional environment with both the instability proxies used by Barro (1991) and the Gastil indices, by comparing their effects both on growth and private investment. The results provide substantial support for the position that the...

We present and test empirically a new theory of property and contract rights. Any incentive an autocrat has to respect such rights comes from his interest in future tax collections and national income and increases with his planning horizon. We find a compelling empirical relationship between...

The Informal Economy provides employment to more than 60 per cent of the labour population in the developing world despite being a site unfettered by regulations and social norms of fairness governing pay and work conditions. In assessing the factors behind an informal agent’s decision to...

We explore the effect of historical ethnic borders on contemporary conflict in Africa. We document that both the intensive and extensive margins of contemporary conflict are higher close to historical ethnic borders. Exploiting variations across artificial regions within an ethnicity's...