Aart Kraay is a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank. He joined the Bank in 1995 after earning a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, and a B.Sc. in economics from the University of Toronto. His research interests include international capital movements, growth and inequality, governance, and the Chinese economy. He has also worked for the China department of the World Bank and was a team member of the 2001 World Development Report 'Building Institutions for Markets'. He has taught courses in macroeconomics, international economics, and growth at Georgetown University, the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

» Kraay, Aart, "Corruption and confidence in public institutions: evidence from a global survey".

It is commonly believed that America and Europe are very different societies, and growing apart. A look at the data shows that the anecdotes are misleading and that the differences across the Atlantic have been overstated.

Peter Baldwin, Professor of History at UCLA, is author of several books on the comparative history of European and American state building, most recently, Disease and Democracy: The Industrialized World Faces AIDS.

Introduction by FSI Senior Fellow Josef Joffe.

What happens to armed organizations after they sign peace accords? Why do they dissolve, return to war, or form non-violent political parties? This seminar addresses and seeks to explain this empirical variation in former armed groups’' trajectories, using extensive micro-level data on the Colombian paramilitaries. In so doing, it seeks to contribute an organizational-level study of peace-building. The trajectories explored in this seminar fundamentally shape prospects for peace, state-building, and democratization, influence post-war patterns of human rights abuses, and impact the legalization of war economies.

Sarah Zukerman Daly is a 2009-2010 Predoctoral Fellow and Visiting Scholar.  She is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sarah holds a BA (2003) with Distinction in International Relations from Stanford University and a MS (2004) with Distinction in Development Studies from the London School of Economics. She is also an alumna of the 2002-2003 CISAC Undergraduate Honors Program.

Sarah's dissertation analyzes variation in demilitarized groups' post-war trajectories. Specifically, it asks, why, in the aftermath of peace agreements, do armed actors form political parties, remilitarize, or go out of business? Her other current projects seek to explain sub-national variation in insurgency onset in Colombia; state strategies towards ethnic minorities in the former Soviet Union; and the role of emotions in transitional justice.