This paper investigates the empirical role of violent conflicts for the causal effect of democracy on economic growth. Exploiting within-country variation to identify the effect of democratization during the “Third Wave”, we find evidence that the effect of democratization is weaker than...

This paper presents an empirical examination of economic and institutional development. Utilizing a novel data set on American Indian tribal nations, we investigate how constitutional design affects economic development, while holding the broader legal and political environment fixed....

Using cross-country data, we find evidence for a significant negative interaction effect between democracy and inequality in determining the quality of growth-promoting institutions like rule of law. Democracy is associated with institutions of higher quality when inequality is lower.

This paper offers a rationale for limiting the delegation of (real) authority, which neither relies on insurance arguments nor depends on ownership structure. We analyse a repeated hidden action model in which the actions of a risk neutral agent determine his future outside option. Consequently,...