The present paper analyses how resource rents may affect political outcomes in a polarized society, where groups hold conflicting views on economic policy. A politically dominant group decides whether or not to include the opposition in the national political process. The weaker group chooses...

I model the link between political regime and level of diversification following a windfall of natural resource revenues. The explanatory variables I make use of are the political support functions embedded within each type of regime and the disparate levels of discretion, openness,...

Rent, resources, and technologies are three crucial issues to the understanding of history and economics. The scarcity of resources, its interplay with technology, and the role of rent in explaining both economic growth and income distribution are investigated by adopting a multi-sectoral and...

While several studies have focused on the effect of natural resources on economic development, less attention has been paid to their effects on other development outcomes. We contribute to this literature by studying the impact of resource rents on fiscal capacity, i.e., the ability of states to...

When do opposition groups decide to mount a terrorism campaign and when do they enter an open civil conflict against the ruling government? This paper models an opposition group's choice between peace, terrorism, and open conflict. Terrorism emerges if executive constraints are intermediate and...

This paper proposes a simple framework to better understand an opposition group's choice between peace, terrorism, and open civil conflict against the government. Our model implies that terrorism emerges if constraints on the ruling executive group are intermediate and rents are sizeable, hereas...