This paper uses annual aggregate data for 36 low or middle income countries covering the period 1995-2001 to test the responsiveness of investment to the sources of finance under (un)favourable regimes for investment. Two sources of private investment finance are considered: private investment...

The great majority of international contracts provide for arbitration in the event of dispute. Legal scholars argue that international arbitration is causing the development of a legal doctrine attuned to the needs of business and independent of national laws. This paper studies international...

This paper uses a comparative and historical framework to evaluate the growth performance of the West German economy from the beginning of the post-war period in 1945 to the reunification of Germany in 1990. Cross-country growth equations are used at the outset to provide a benchmark against...

This study investigates the effects of introducing elections on public goods and redistribution in rural China. We collect a large and unique survey to document the history of political reforms and economic policies and exploit the staggered timing of the introduction of elections for causal...

Acemoglu, Johnson, Robinson and Yared (2008) document that the cross-country correlation between income per capita and democracy disappears once including country fixed effects. This paper tests the hypothesis that the effect of income on democracy might differ systematically across countries. A...

We propose a theory by which geographic variations in the transparency of the production process explain cross-regional differences in the scale of the state, in its hierarchical structure, and in property rights over land. The key linkage between geography and these institutions, we posit, is...

Have Irish, German or Italian settlers arriving in the US at the turn of the 20th century left an institutional trace which determines economic development differences to this day? Does the national origin of migrants matter for long-term development? This paper explores whether the distinct...

We investigate the role of deeply-rooted pre-colonial ethnic institutions in shaping comparative regional development within African countries. We combine information on the spatial distribution of ethnicities before colonization with regional variation in contemporary economic performance, as...

Motivated by a novel stylized fact -- countries with isolated capital cities display worse quality of governance -- we provide a framework of endogenous institutional choice based on the idea that elites are constrained by the threat of rebellion, and that this threat is rendered less effective...

In this paper we investigate the impact of local quality of government on the attractiveness of European regions to migrants. The analysis is based on panel data estimations of 254 regions for the period between 1995 and 2009. Different instrumental variable techniques have been employed in...