A surprising feature of resource-rich economies is slow growth.  It is often argued that natural-resource production impedes development by creating market or institutional failures.  This paper establishes an alternative explanation -  a slow-growing resource sector.  A declining resource...

This study analyses behaviour of women community based organisations in two districts in Nepal in reducing prevalence of child malnutrition in member households. Our survey focused on three sets of women organisations: those that receive intensive external support are compared with those that...

This paper develops a model in which supply of a non-renewable resource can adjust through two margins: the rate of depletion and the rate of field opening.  Faster depletion of existing fields means that less of the resource can ultimately be extracted, and optimal depletion of open fields...

Climate policy requires that much of the world's reserves of fossil fuels remain unburned.  This paper makes the case for implementing this directly through policy to close the global coal industry.  Coal is singled out because of its high emissions intensity, low rents per unit value, local...

Working with a sample of individuals from 43 countries, including some of the most and least corrupt in the world, we run an experiment in which: `private citizens` have to decide whether and how much to offer `public servants` in exchange for corrupt services; `public servants` have to decide...

Using a simple one-shot bribery game, we find evidence of a negative externality effect and a framing effect.  When the losses suffered by third parties due to a bribe being offered and accepted are high and the game is presented as a petty corruption scenario instead of in abstract terms...

A corrupt transaction is often the result of bargaining between the parties involved.  This paper models bribery as a double auction where a private citizen and a public official strategically interact as the potential buyer and the potential seller of a corrupt service.  Individuals differ in...

Monitoring corruption typically relies on top-down interventions aimed at increasing the probability of external controls and the severity of punishment.  An alternative approach to fighting corruption is to induce bottom-up pressure for reform.  Recent studies have shown that both top-down...

Why do some people choose corruption over honesty and others not?  Do the social norms and values prevailing in the societies in which they grew up affect their decisions?  In 2005, we conducted a bribery experiment and found that, among undergraduates, we could predict who would act corruptly...

Using a simple one-shot bribery game, we find evience of a negative externality effect and a framing effect.  When the losses suffered by a third parties due to a bribe being offered and accepted are increased bribes are less likely to be offered and accepted.  And when the game is presented...