I explore the fact that the Mongol Empire invaded most of Eurasia but left Western Europe untouched. I hypothesize that differences in exposure to the Mongols resulted in divergent institutional paths. Where the Mongols invaded, they set up highly centralized autocratic institutions. Meanwhile,...

Democratic transitions since 2011 in the Middle East and North Africa have mostly failed to consolidate and have been hindered by the difficult economic heritage of previous authoritarian governments. Which short-term economic policies may help consolidate the early democratisation process?

This paper investigates the impact of openness to trade and higher levels of human capital on the economies of some MENA countries. To answer the question: whether either human capital or openness can be shown to cause productivity, we use panel data on 16 countries spanning the 1965 -2000...

The present work analyses the impact of free trade agreements (FTAs) on the improvement of trade flows for ten Middle East and North African Countries (MENA) for the period 1990-2010. An extended gravity model is estimated to analyse the average and individual impact of six FTAs (four...

We study the effect of civil conflict on social capital, focusing on the experience of Uganda during the last decade. Using individual and county-level data, we document causal effects on trust and ethnic identity of an exogenous outburst of ethnic conflicts in 2002-04. We exploit two waves of...

Are ethnic specialization and thus a downward sloping labor demand curve fundamental features of labor market competition between ethnic groups? In a general equilibrium model, this paper argues that spillover effects in skill acquisition and social distances between ethnic groups engender...

Why did some countries vote not to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine at the United National General Assembly's first emergency session since 1997? Our study examines different economic, political, geographic and historical reasons behind the voting behaviour of several countries in favour of...