In this essay I would like to confront a number of fundamental puzzles in economic history/development--puzzles that go to the heart of the nature of economic change. They can be broadly classified under two general headings: how to account for the uneven and erratic pattern of both historical...

Early states like China, India, Italy and Greece have been experiencing more rapid economic growth in recent decades than have later-comers to agriculture and statehood like New Guinea, the Congo, and Uruguay. We show that more rapid growth by early starters has been the norm in economic...

This paper is based on the governance chapter contribution to the 2003/04 Global Competitiveness Report (GCR). Building from the 2002/03 contribution to the GCR, it argues that governance continues to be at a crossroad, its underperformance being evident worldwide in most regions and across many...

We use a set of established growth models, which simultaneously include human capital and R&D, to show that the effect of mortality rate in human capital accumulation is quantitatively more important than the effect of perfectly guaranteed patents on research. First, we show that the effect of...

The Easterlin Paradox refers to the fact that happiness data are typically stationary in spite of considerable increases in income. This amounts to a rejection of the hypothesis that current income is the only argument in the utility function. One possible answer is that human development...

The institution of slavery displays a puzzling historical pattern: it is found mostly at intermediate stages of agricultural development, in horticultural societies, and less frequently among hunter-gatherers and societies at more advanced agrarian stages. We explain this rise-and- fall pattern...

The institution of slavery displays a puzzling historical pattern: it is found mostly at intermediate stages of agricultural development, in horticultural societies, and less frequently among hunter-gatherers and societies at more advanced agrarian stages. We explain this rise-and- fall pattern...

THIS PAPER ENUNERATES THE SEQUENTIAL HISTORIC ORIGIN OF OSUMENYI VILLAGE AND ITS CULTURAL, RELIGIOUS AND ECONOMIC PRACTICES. IN OTHERWORDS, THE PAPER WILL HELP TO CLARIFY SOME OF THE SOCIO-POLITICAL CHANGES AND ECONOMIC CHANGES THAT HAS TAKEN PLACE IN OSUMENYI'S HISTORY. THE PAPER RECOMMENDS THE...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of international monies and the theory related to their adoption and use. We summarize the history of international monies, beginning with a discussion of the gold solidus introduced in the fourth century by the Emperor Constantine, continuing...

The main goal of this essay is to provide microfoundations in a spatial general equilibrium framework for the fact that individuals use money to make transactions, and hence microfoundations for the cash in advance constraint. We analyze the emergence of a monetary economy out of a...