Related papers: External Threats, Political Turnover and Fiscal Ca…

I study the relationship between the likelihood of a violent domestic conflict and the risk that such a conflict "externalizes" (i.e. spreads to another country by creating an international dispute). I consider a situation in which a…

I study how political bias and audience costs impose domestic institutional constraints that affect states' capacity to reach peaceful agreements during crises. With a mechanism design approach, I show that the existence of peaceful…

This paper develops a political-economy theory of statehood without capacity. I argue that under specific institutional and geopolitical conditions, a polity can become trapped in an equilibrium of nominal statehood: a state in which claims…

Many empirical studies have shown that government quality is a key determinant of vulnerability to natural disasters. Protection against natural disasters can be a public good -- flood protection, for example -- or a natural monopoly --…

Although very large wars remain an enduring threat in global politics, we lack a clear understanding of how some wars become large and costly, while most do not. There are three possibilities: large conflicts start with and maintain intense…

The deterrent effect of military alliances is well documented and widely accepted. However, such work has typically assumed that alliances are exogenous. This is problematic as alliances may simultaneously influence the probability of…

This paper proposes a model of tax compliance and fiscal capacity grounded in universalization reasoning. Citizens partially internalize the consequences of concealment by imagining a world in which everyone acted similarly, linking their…

This paper examines a government's strategic resource allocation choices when facing an opposing group whose military power is uncertain. We investigate how this uncertainty affects the government's decision to divide resources in a way…

The risk of systemic war seems dependant on the level of criticality and sensitivity of the International System, and the system's conditions. The level of criticality and sensitivity is dependant on the developmental stage of the…

An explanation for the political processes leading to the sudden collapse of empires and states would be useful for understanding both historical and contemporary political events. We seek a general description of state collapse spanning…

We study the effects on economic activity of a pure temporary change in government debt and the relationship between the debt multiplier and the level of debt in an overlapping generations framework. The debt multiplier is positive but…

The governance of the political and economic world order builds on a complex architecture of international treaties at various geographical scales. In a historical phase of high institutional turbulence, assessing the stability of such…

This study analyzes public debts and deficits between European countries. The statistical evidence here seems in general to reveal that sovereign debts and government deficits of countries within European Monetary Unification-in average-…

Using an unbalanced panel data covering 75 countries from 1991 to 2019, we explore how the political risk impacts on food reserve ratio. The empirical findings show that an increasing political risk negatively affect food reserve ratio, and…

Industrial policy has returned to the centre of economic governance, particularly in the high-tech sectors where positive network externalities in demand make market dominance self-reinforcing. This paper studies the welfare effects of an…

This paper investigates how the cost of public debt shapes fiscal policy and its effect on the economy. Using U.S. historical data, I show that when servicing the debt creates a fiscal burden, the government responds to spending shocks by…

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic consequences of military spending and militarization within a dynamic growth framework. Building on a Keynesian goods-market model, we examine how the allocation of government expenditure between…

Social and political polarization is a significant source of conflict and poor governance in many societies. Thus, understanding its causes has become a priority of scholars across many disciplines. Here we demonstrate that shifts in…

We study the relationship between foreign debt and GDP growth using a panel dataset of 50 countries from 1997 to 2015. We find that economic growth correlates positively with foreign debt and that the relationship is causal in nature by…

Analysis of wars and conflicts between regions has been an important topic of interest throughout the history of humankind. In the latter part of the 20th century, in the aftermath of two World Wars and the shadow of nuclear, biological,…