Increased attention to the issue of aid effectiveness has sparked a flurry of empirical studies attempting to measure the macro-level impact of aid flows on the performances of developing countries. These studies yield ambiguous and even contradictory results and one possible source of confusion...

What accounts for the dynamics of financial reforms? This paper identifies the political regime as main factor. Focusing on democratization and financial reform, it puts forward novel evidence for a U-shaped relation, across countries, over time as well as in a panel setting for different reform...

We look at the drastic cut of the administered cocoa producer price in 1990 Cote d'Ivoire and study to which extent cocoa producers' children suffered from this severe aggregate shock in terms of school enrollment, labor, height stature and morbidity. Using pre-crisis (1985-88) and post-crisis...

This paper contributes to the heated debate on the link between climate and civil war. We exploit a large dataset of a drought index commonly used in hydrology, the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). The PDSI is based on a hydrological model and is a cumulative measure that takes account of...

Indirect Exporters are de fined as firms exporting through a trade intermediary. Despite numerous recent appearances in theoretical work, empirical evidence comparing these firms to uniquely domestic fi rms and Direct Exporters does not exist. I show that in Eastern Europe these firms do, as...

Using a 2006 household survey in Mali, we compare current poverty rates and inequality levels with counterfactual ones in the absence of migration and remittances. With proper hypotheses on migrants and a selection model, we are able to impute a counterfactual income for households currently...

We analyze the dual role of currency mismatch: as a vehicle that exposes the economy to systemic risk, but also as an engine of growth. We do so at the macro and the micro levels for emerging European economies in recent years. At the aggregate level, we construct a new index of currency...