Related papers: From Revolution to Ruin: An Empirical Analysis Yem…
This paper examines whether major political institutional disruptions produce temporary shocks or structural breaks in long-term development. Using the 1979 Iranian Revolution as a natural experiment, we apply the synthetic control method…
We examine the effect of civil war in Syria on economic growth, human development and institutional quality. Building on the synthetic control method, we estimate the missing counterfactual scenario in the hypothetical absence of the armed…
This paper studies the long-run economic and institutional consequences of Iran's confrontation with the West, treating the 2006-2007 strategic shift as the onset of a sustained confrontation regime rather than a discrete sanctions episode.…
Yemen is considered a global terrorist base for Al-Qaeda and in recent years rampant violence is threatening social order. Here we show that the socio-economic origins of violence recently changed. Prior to 2008, violence can be attributed…
Major revolts have recently erupted in parts of the Middle East with substantial international repercussions. Predicting, coping with and winning those revolts have become a grave problem for many regimes and for world powers. We propose a…
If Tunisia was hailed as a success story with its high rankings on economic, educational, and other indicators compared to other Arab countries, the 2011 popular uprisings demonstrate the need for political reforms but also major economic…
In accordance with "Democracy's Effect on Development: More Questions than Answers", we seek to carry out a study in following the description in the 'Questions for Further Study.' To that end, we studied 33 countries in the Sub-Saharan…
The recent social unrest across the Middle East and North Africa has deposed dictators who had ruled for decades. While the events have been hailed as an "Arab Spring" by those who hope that repressive autocracies will be replaced by…
This paper presents a comprehensive scientometric analysis of the long-term impact of the 1979 Iranian Revolution on the nation scientific development. Using Scopus-indexed data from 1960 to 2024, we benchmark Iran publication trajectory…
Policy choices in the wake of recent mass protests in Egypt will determine the likelihood of civil war in the short run and the prospects for democracy in the long run. Economic conditions can be improved by international action to reduce…
The synthetic control method has emerged as a widely utilized empirical tool for estimating the causal effects of public policies, natural disasters, and other interventions on various economic, social, institutional, and political…
The self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on December 17, 2011 in the small Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid, set off a sequence of events culminating in the revolutions of the Arab Spring. It is widely believed that the Internet and social media…
Economic competition and deregulation have led to a polarization of societies between a small, increasingly powerful elite and a majority of socially excluded individuals, marginalized and unconnected to political representations. This is…
Extreme political shocks may reshape economies not only through contemporaneous disruption but by altering beliefs about the distribution of future states. We study how such belief ruptures affect the cost of capital, expectations, and…
This paper constructs internationally consistent measures of macroeconomic uncertainty. Our econometric framework extracts uncertainty from revisions in data obtained from standardized national accounts. Applying our model to post-WWII…
The 2024 July Revolution in Bangladesh represents a landmark event in the study of civil resistance. This study investigates the central paradox of the success of this student-led civilian uprising: how state violence, intended to quell…
I present a unified discussion of several recently published results concerning the escalation, timing and severity of violent events in human conflicts and global terrorism, and set them in the wider context of real-world and cyber-based…
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…
Ten years ago we presented a modified version of Okun law for the biggest developed economies and reported its excellent predictive power. In this study, we revisit the original models using the estimates of real GDP per capita and…
Okun's law for the biggest developed countries is re-estimated using the most recent data on real GDP per capita and the rate of unemployment. Our results show that the change in unemployment rate can be predicted with a high accuracy. The…