Can brief, foreign-funded efforts to build local institutions have positive effects on local patterns of governance, cooperation, and well-being? Prior research suggests that such small-scale, externally driven interventions are unlikely to substantially alter patterns of social interaction in a...

Supports the view that low-income countries have a greater risk of violent conflict due to poor governance and weak institutions. Some have argued for a direct causal effect via a country's labor market, but a major obstacle to assessing these arguments has been the lack of direct measures of...