The paper considers the transformation of the political system as countries pass through the Grand Transition from a poor developing country to a wealthy developed country. In the process most countries change from an authoritarian to a democratic political system. This is shown by using the...

We consider whether Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries are mainly poor because they are governed worse than other countries, as suggested by recent studies on the supremacy of institutions. Our empirical results show that the supremacy of institutions does not hold. SSA countries appear to face...

Macroeconomic data are subject to revision over time as later vintages are released, yet the usual way of generating real-time out-of-sample forecasts from models effectively makes no allowance for this form of data uncertainty. We analyse a simple method which has been used in the context of...

The effects of data uncertainty on real-time decision-making can be reduced by predicting early revisions to US GDP growth. We show that survey forecasts efficiently anticipate the first-revised estimate of GDP, but that forecasting models incorporating monthly economic indicators and daily...

In this paper we consider the value of Google Trends search data for nowcasting (and forecasting) GDP growth for a developed (U.S.) and emerging-market economy (Brazil). Our focus is on the marginal contribution of "Big Data" in the form of Google Trends data over and above that of traditional...