Eric Werker
Biographic Data
| ID | 3710045 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Eric Werker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Eric |
| FAMILY NAME | Werker |
| SIGNATURE | WERKER E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Simon Fraser University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9234-6118 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 469 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The economic impact of international travel measures used during the Covid-19 pandemic: A scoping review
INTRODUCTION: Assessment of the use of travel measures during COVID-19 has focused on their effectiveness in achieving public health objectives. However, the prolonged use of highly varied and frequently changing measures by governments, and their unintended consequences caused, has been controversial. This has led to a call for coordinated decision-making focused on risk-based approaches, which requires better understanding of the broader impact…
Is conventional wisdom about resource taxation correct? Mining evidence from transparency reporting
This paper theoretically and empirically investigates the factors that determine the government “take” in gold mining projects around the world. We develop a theoretical model to predict the government take, which we define as the ratio of total payments to the government from a mining project (including taxes, fees, and royalties) relative to the mining company’s pre-tax net revenue from the same project. In line with investment decision theory,…
Improved resource governance through transparency: Evidence from Mongolia
Transparency and accountability initiatives have emerged as a potential solution to combat corruption and increase public benefits from the extractive sector in resource-abundant countries. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is one such initiative, through which 49 resource-rich countries have disclosed a cumulative 282 fiscal years of government revenues amounting to US$1.9 trillion since 2003. This paper explores the poten…
Price Controls in Liberia
In 2009, the Liberian government removed a wide-reaching set of price controls. Compared with goods never subject to price ceilings, goods whose prices were liberalized showed increased prices and decreased quantity supplied. This effect was larger for products with smaller permitted markup and disproportionately affected goods in the rural consumption basket. The results do not support the hypotheses that the price controls caused queuing, allow…
Are economic rents good for development? Evidence from the manufacturing sector
Are rents, or excess profits, good for development? Rents could induce firms to lobby or bribe governments to preserve the status quo; on the other hand, rents may promote growth by giving firms the needed funds to make investments in fixed capital or research and development. To test this question empirically, we use a panel of manufacturing data at the industry-country-year level, and measure rents by the mark-up ratio. We find that the relatio…
Ebola, jobs and economic activity in Liberia
BACKGROUND: The 2014 Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in the neighbouring West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone represents the most significant setback to the region's development in over a decade. This study provides evidence on the extent to which economic activity declined and jobs disappeared in Liberia during the outbreak. METHODS: To estimate how the level of activity and number of jobs in a given set of firms changed…
Aid and the Rise and Fall of Conflict in the Muslim World
The conflict following the Arab Spring is not the first wave of civil war in the Muslim world in recent time. From the mid-1980s to the end of the century, an average of one in 10 predominantly-Muslim countries experienced violent civil war in any given year. We provide a partial explanation for this statistic: a foreign aid windfall to poor, non-oil producing Muslim countries during the twin oil crises of the 1970s allowed the recipient states t…
The Costs of Favoritism: Is Politically Driven Aid Less Effective
Governments provide foreign aid for both political and economic reasons, as is now well documented. Conventional wisdom holds that political motivations lower the effectiveness of aid in promoting developmental objectives. We test this claim by focusing on a setting in which we observe “effectiveness” with some precision, using the ex post performance ratings of World Bank projects. Our measures of “political importance” are plausibly exogenous: …
Do voters demand responsive governments? Evidence from Indian disaster relief
The Political Economy of ``Natural'' Disasters
Natural disasters occur in a political space. Although events beyond our control may trigger a disaster, the level of government preparedness and response greatly determines the extent of suffering incurred by the affected population. The authors use a political-economy model of disaster prevention, supported by case studies and preliminary empirics, to explain why some governments prepare well for disasters and others do not. The authors show ho…
What Do Nongovernmental Organizations Do
Nongovernmental organizations are one group of players who are active in the efforts of international development and increasing the welfare of poor people in poor countries. Nongovernmental organizations are largely staffed by altruistic employees and volunteers working towards ideological, rather than financial, ends. Their founders are often intense, creative individuals who sometimes come up with a new product to deliver or a better way to de…
Refugee Camp Economies
This paper describes the economy of a refugee camp. Key distortions to the economy of Kyangwali Refugee Settlement in Uganda are noted and the findings are used to construct a generic model of a refugee camp economy. Camp economies are influenced by host country policies, such as restrictions on refugees’ movement and work, as well as by the physical and economic isolation of the site. Moreover, market outcomes interact with the nature of humanit…
Local Company Politics: A Proposal
Corrupt politicians, and poor government more generally, are commonly viewed as a primary barrier to economic progress. The roots to these problems run deep in many political systems across the developing world, and attempts at reform have rarely found much success. To combat this impasse, we suggest a radical new approach to local politics that, instead of proposing reforms to the electoral process, focuses on the political actors that might ent…
How Much Is a Seat on the Security Council Worth? Foreign Aid and Bribery at the United Nations
Ten of the 15 seats on the U.N. Security Council are held by rotating members serving two-year terms. We find that a country's U.S. aid increases by 59 percent and its U.N. aid by 8 percent when it rotates onto the council. This effect increases during years in which key diplomatic events take place (when members' votes should be especially valuable), and the timing of the effect closely tracks a country's election to, and exit from, the council.…
Portrait of a Failed Rebellion: An Account of Rational, Sub-Optimal Violence in Western Uganda
While newspaper reports typically describe anti-civilian violence in civil war as resulting from hatred or anarchy, there is an emerging literature that interprets these processes as calculated, strategic actions of war makers. We argue that this literature overestimates the strategic value of violence by focusing on conflicts where this strategy is used deliberately and on a massive scale. Our analysis examines the violence in a failed, peripher…
How Much Is a Seat on the Security Council Worth? Foreign Aid and Bribery at the United Nations
Ten of the 15 seats on the U.N. Security Council are held by rotating members serving two-year terms. We find that a country's U.S. aid increases by 59 percent and its U.N. aid by 8 percent when it rotates onto the council. This effect increases during years in which key diplomatic events take place (when members' votes should be especially valuable), and the timing of the effect closely tracks a country's election to, and exit from, the council.…
Do voters demand responsive governments? Evidence from Indian disaster relief
The Political Economy of ``Natural'' Disasters
Natural disasters occur in a political space. Although events beyond our control may trigger a disaster, the level of government preparedness and response greatly determines the extent of suffering incurred by the affected population. The authors use a political-economy model of disaster prevention, supported by case studies and preliminary empirics, to explain why some governments prepare well for disasters and others do not. The authors show ho…
Refugee Camp Economies
This paper describes the economy of a refugee camp. Key distortions to the economy of Kyangwali Refugee Settlement in Uganda are noted and the findings are used to construct a generic model of a refugee camp economy. Camp economies are influenced by host country policies, such as restrictions on refugees’ movement and work, as well as by the physical and economic isolation of the site. Moreover, market outcomes interact with the nature of humanit…
Portrait of a Failed Rebellion: An Account of Rational, Sub-Optimal Violence in Western Uganda
While newspaper reports typically describe anti-civilian violence in civil war as resulting from hatred or anarchy, there is an emerging literature that interprets these processes as calculated, strategic actions of war makers. We argue that this literature overestimates the strategic value of violence by focusing on conflicts where this strategy is used deliberately and on a massive scale. Our analysis examines the violence in a failed, peripher…
What Do Nongovernmental Organizations Do
Nongovernmental organizations are one group of players who are active in the efforts of international development and increasing the welfare of poor people in poor countries. Nongovernmental organizations are largely staffed by altruistic employees and volunteers working towards ideological, rather than financial, ends. Their founders are often intense, creative individuals who sometimes come up with a new product to deliver or a better way to de…
The Costs of Favoritism: Is Politically Driven Aid Less Effective
Governments provide foreign aid for both political and economic reasons, as is now well documented. Conventional wisdom holds that political motivations lower the effectiveness of aid in promoting developmental objectives. We test this claim by focusing on a setting in which we observe “effectiveness” with some precision, using the ex post performance ratings of World Bank projects. Our measures of “political importance” are plausibly exogenous: …
Aid and the Rise and Fall of Conflict in the Muslim World
The conflict following the Arab Spring is not the first wave of civil war in the Muslim world in recent time. From the mid-1980s to the end of the century, an average of one in 10 predominantly-Muslim countries experienced violent civil war in any given year. We provide a partial explanation for this statistic: a foreign aid windfall to poor, non-oil producing Muslim countries during the twin oil crises of the 1970s allowed the recipient states t…
Is conventional wisdom about resource taxation correct? Mining evidence from transparency reporting
This paper theoretically and empirically investigates the factors that determine the government “take” in gold mining projects around the world. We develop a theoretical model to predict the government take, which we define as the ratio of total payments to the government from a mining project (including taxes, fees, and royalties) relative to the mining company’s pre-tax net revenue from the same project. In line with investment decision theory,…
Improved resource governance through transparency: Evidence from Mongolia
Transparency and accountability initiatives have emerged as a potential solution to combat corruption and increase public benefits from the extractive sector in resource-abundant countries. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is one such initiative, through which 49 resource-rich countries have disclosed a cumulative 282 fiscal years of government revenues amounting to US$1.9 trillion since 2003. This paper explores the poten…
Price Controls in Liberia
In 2009, the Liberian government removed a wide-reaching set of price controls. Compared with goods never subject to price ceilings, goods whose prices were liberalized showed increased prices and decreased quantity supplied. This effect was larger for products with smaller permitted markup and disproportionately affected goods in the rural consumption basket. The results do not support the hypotheses that the price controls caused queuing, allow…
Ebola, jobs and economic activity in Liberia
BACKGROUND: The 2014 Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in the neighbouring West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone represents the most significant setback to the region's development in over a decade. This study provides evidence on the extent to which economic activity declined and jobs disappeared in Liberia during the outbreak. METHODS: To estimate how the level of activity and number of jobs in a given set of firms changed…
Are economic rents good for development? Evidence from the manufacturing sector
Are rents, or excess profits, good for development? Rents could induce firms to lobby or bribe governments to preserve the status quo; on the other hand, rents may promote growth by giving firms the needed funds to make investments in fixed capital or research and development. To test this question empirically, we use a panel of manufacturing data at the industry-country-year level, and measure rents by the mark-up ratio. We find that the relatio…
Portrait of a Failed Rebellion: An Account of Rational, Sub-Optimal Violence in Western Uganda
While newspaper reports typically describe anti-civilian violence in civil war as resulting from hatred or anarchy, there is an emerging literature that interprets these processes as calculated, strategic actions of war makers. We argue that this literature overestimates the strategic value of violence by focusing on conflicts where this strategy is used deliberately and on a massive scale. Our analysis examines the violence in a failed, peripher…
How Much Is a Seat on the Security Council Worth? Foreign Aid and Bribery at the United Nations
Ten of the 15 seats on the U.N. Security Council are held by rotating members serving two-year terms. We find that a country's U.S. aid increases by 59 percent and its U.N. aid by 8 percent when it rotates onto the council. This effect increases during years in which key diplomatic events take place (when members' votes should be especially valuable), and the timing of the effect closely tracks a country's election to, and exit from, the council.…
Refugee Camp Economies
This paper describes the economy of a refugee camp. Key distortions to the economy of Kyangwali Refugee Settlement in Uganda are noted and the findings are used to construct a generic model of a refugee camp economy. Camp economies are influenced by host country policies, such as restrictions on refugees’ movement and work, as well as by the physical and economic isolation of the site. Moreover, market outcomes interact with the nature of humanit…
Local Company Politics: A Proposal
Corrupt politicians, and poor government more generally, are commonly viewed as a primary barrier to economic progress. The roots to these problems run deep in many political systems across the developing world, and attempts at reform have rarely found much success. To combat this impasse, we suggest a radical new approach to local politics that, instead of proposing reforms to the electoral process, focuses on the political actors that might ent…
The Political Economy of ``Natural'' Disasters
Natural disasters occur in a political space. Although events beyond our control may trigger a disaster, the level of government preparedness and response greatly determines the extent of suffering incurred by the affected population. The authors use a political-economy model of disaster prevention, supported by case studies and preliminary empirics, to explain why some governments prepare well for disasters and others do not. The authors show ho…
What Do Nongovernmental Organizations Do
Nongovernmental organizations are one group of players who are active in the efforts of international development and increasing the welfare of poor people in poor countries. Nongovernmental organizations are largely staffed by altruistic employees and volunteers working towards ideological, rather than financial, ends. Their founders are often intense, creative individuals who sometimes come up with a new product to deliver or a better way to de…
Do voters demand responsive governments? Evidence from Indian disaster relief
The Costs of Favoritism: Is Politically Driven Aid Less Effective
Governments provide foreign aid for both political and economic reasons, as is now well documented. Conventional wisdom holds that political motivations lower the effectiveness of aid in promoting developmental objectives. We test this claim by focusing on a setting in which we observe “effectiveness” with some precision, using the ex post performance ratings of World Bank projects. Our measures of “political importance” are plausibly exogenous: …
Aid and the Rise and Fall of Conflict in the Muslim World
The conflict following the Arab Spring is not the first wave of civil war in the Muslim world in recent time. From the mid-1980s to the end of the century, an average of one in 10 predominantly-Muslim countries experienced violent civil war in any given year. We provide a partial explanation for this statistic: a foreign aid windfall to poor, non-oil producing Muslim countries during the twin oil crises of the 1970s allowed the recipient states t…
Ebola, jobs and economic activity in Liberia
BACKGROUND: The 2014 Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in the neighbouring West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone represents the most significant setback to the region's development in over a decade. This study provides evidence on the extent to which economic activity declined and jobs disappeared in Liberia during the outbreak. METHODS: To estimate how the level of activity and number of jobs in a given set of firms changed…
Are economic rents good for development? Evidence from the manufacturing sector
Are rents, or excess profits, good for development? Rents could induce firms to lobby or bribe governments to preserve the status quo; on the other hand, rents may promote growth by giving firms the needed funds to make investments in fixed capital or research and development. To test this question empirically, we use a panel of manufacturing data at the industry-country-year level, and measure rents by the mark-up ratio. We find that the relatio…
Improved resource governance through transparency: Evidence from Mongolia
Transparency and accountability initiatives have emerged as a potential solution to combat corruption and increase public benefits from the extractive sector in resource-abundant countries. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is one such initiative, through which 49 resource-rich countries have disclosed a cumulative 282 fiscal years of government revenues amounting to US$1.9 trillion since 2003. This paper explores the poten…
Price Controls in Liberia
In 2009, the Liberian government removed a wide-reaching set of price controls. Compared with goods never subject to price ceilings, goods whose prices were liberalized showed increased prices and decreased quantity supplied. This effect was larger for products with smaller permitted markup and disproportionately affected goods in the rural consumption basket. The results do not support the hypotheses that the price controls caused queuing, allow…
Is conventional wisdom about resource taxation correct? Mining evidence from transparency reporting
This paper theoretically and empirically investigates the factors that determine the government “take” in gold mining projects around the world. We develop a theoretical model to predict the government take, which we define as the ratio of total payments to the government from a mining project (including taxes, fees, and royalties) relative to the mining company’s pre-tax net revenue from the same project. In line with investment decision theory,…
The economic impact of international travel measures used during the Covid-19 pandemic: A scoping review
INTRODUCTION: Assessment of the use of travel measures during COVID-19 has focused on their effectiveness in achieving public health objectives. However, the prolonged use of highly varied and frequently changing measures by governments, and their unintended consequences caused, has been controversial. This has led to a call for coordinated decision-making focused on risk-based approaches, which requires better understanding of the broader impact…
Economics (12 works) · Political science (11 works) · Business (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Political economy (6 works) · Government (linguistics (5 works) · Finance (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Public Administration (4 works)