Although many of the worst performing countries over the post-World War II period were autocracies, many of the best were likewise autocratic. At the same time, no long-lived autocracy currently is rich whereas every long-lived democracy is. This paper proposes a theory to account for these...

Data on the growth performances of countries with similar comparative (dis)advantage and political institutions reveal a striking variation across world regions. While some former autocracies such as the East Asian growth miracles have done remarkably well, others such as the Latin American...

Data on the growth performances of countries with similar comparative (dis)advantage and political institutions reveal a striking variation across world regions. While some former autocracies such as the East Asian growth miracles have done remarkably well, others such as the Latin American...

We study the evolution of the global arms trade network using a unique dataset on all international transfers of major conventional weapons over the period 1950-2007. First, we provide a careful description of the characteristics of global arms trade using tools from social network analysis....

Data on the growth performances of countries with similar comparative (dis)advantage and political institutions reveal a striking variation across world regions. While some former autoc- racies such as the East Asian growth miracles have done remarkably well; others such as the Latin American...

Data on the growth performances of countries with similar comparative (dis)advantage and political institutions reveal a striking variation across world regions. While some former autocracies such as the East Asian growth miracles have done remarkably well, others such as the Latin American...

Data on the growth performances of countries with similar comparative (dis)advantage and political institutions reveal a striking variation across world regions. While some former autocracies such as the East Asian growth miracles have done remarkably well, others such as the Latin American...

A large literature documents that autocratic regimes have not, on average, outperformed democratic regimes, although they do display greater variance in economic performance. At the same time, no long-lived autocracy currently is rich whereas every long-lived democracy is. This paper puts forth...