While much of the literature studies causes and consequences of war, the reverberations of peace have rarely been studied. By focusing on the universe of ceasefire agreements since 1993, we study the causal effect of peace on economic recovery using a regression discontinuity in time approach....

Violent organizations are often providers of many social services in competition with the state. We provide evidence that these organizations use the provision of social services to gain support. This strategy is only effective when it fills the void left by a weak state. We show this by...

Infolge der Regionalisierung von Wirtschafts- und Strukturpolitik entstehen entweder vollkommen neue Institutionen (horizontale Regionalisierung) oder Institutionen mit neuen Kompetenzen (vertikale Regionalisierung). Der Erfolg einer Regionalisierungspolitik läßt sich am Grad der...

This paper investigates the impacts of conflicts on state-capacity in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a region that has recorded a disproportionate number of armed conflicts and has a high presence in the Fragile States Index rankings. Individually, both conflicts and state-capacity are known to have...

Western elites and the general public agree that foreign intervention is needed to halt the dramatic rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Policymakers hope to militarily defeat ISIS while also resolving the civil crises in Iraq and Syria that allowed the group to flourish. In the...

A large body of recent quantitative work on the 'diversity detriment' hypothesis finds that ethno-religious diversity is linked with a host of societal ills, implying in turn a strong challenge to multiculturalist theory and policies. Given the stakes, the appropriate conceptualization and...

Ethnic heterogeneity influences economic growth through various channels such as efficiency improvement and capital accumulation. However, it is open to discussion exactly how ethnic heterogeneity affects these channels. Hence, this paper attempts to examine the effects of heterogeneity on...