This article provides a succinct review of the arguments stressing the mutual relationship between institutions and economic performance, and a scholarly account of some of the most popular econometric strategies used to minimize reversed causality problems in impact estimation. Among the...

The notion of state capacity has attracted renewed interest over the last few years, in particular in the study of violent conflict. Yet, state capacity is conceived differently depending on whether the interest lies in the state's power to discourage violent conflict, in its ability to...

The Institutional Profiles Database (IPD) produced by the Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD) has been carried out in 2001, 2006 and 2009, and a new wave is planned for 2012. Although the structure of the surveys varies greatly between 2006 and 2009, the similarity of a substantial...

The notion of state capacity has attracted renewed interest over the last few years, in particular in the study of violent conflict. Yet, state capacity is conceived differently depending on whether the interest lies in the state's power to discourage violent conflict, in its ability to...

There are widespread perceptions and countless documented cases of tight-knit networks of politicians and businessmen colluding for allocating public procurement contracts in return for political party donations. In the absence of systematic evidence, neither the magnitude of the problem nor the...