Commodity resources offer vast opportunities for development. In the long run, however, the performance of commodity-rich countries tends to fall short of expectations, as commodity rents induce macroeconomic volatility and undermine incentives to improve institutions. The paper looks at the...

Commodity resources offer huge opportunities for development. In the long run, however, the performance of commodity-rich countries tends to fall short of expectations, as commodity rents induce macroeconomic volatility and undermine incentives to improve institutions. This paper looks at what...

We empirically investigate the relationship between corruption and growth using a firm-level data set that is unique in scale, covering almost 88,000 firms across 141 economies in 2006-2020, with wideranging corruption experiences. The scale and detail of our data allow us to explore the...

We empirically investigate the relationship between corruption and growth using a firm-level data set that is unique in scale, covering almost 88,000 firms across 141 economies in 2006-2020, with wide-ranging corruption experiences. The scale and detail of our data allow us to explore the...

Every dictator dislikes free media. Yet, many non-democratic countries have partially free or almost free media. In this paper, we develop a theory of media freedom in dictatorships and provide systematic statistical evidence in support of this theory. In our model, free media allow a dictator...