We examine the association between indicators of real GDP per capita and the ACP1 genetic adaptation to disease and ultraviolet radiation environment. We find a strong impact that varies across the A, B, and C alleles. The result is robust to controlling for reversal of fortunes, migration, and...

This paper is part of series of studies focusing on the measurement and definition of institutions. This paper presents a database on institutional measures for Tanzania for the period 1884 to 2008. These indicators are used to assess the nature of political and economic institutional...

This paper presents an analysis of the interaction of human capital investment and the development of social and political institutions. We find that human capital matters - for growth through its quality dimension; for distributional conflict by raising political aspirations. But human capital...

This paper presents a database on institutional measures for Namibia for the period 1884 to 2008. Using the techniques of principal components and factor analysis in aggregating these indicators, the study does two things. First, it illustrates a methodology for constructing de jure and de facto...

This paper aims to construct a new set of institutional indicators for Malawi. Our political freedom index correlates strongly with the Freedom House political rights and civil liberties indices, but consists of a far longer time series, which can be used to examine long-run issues with greater...

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of institutions on fixed capital accumulation over time in two developing countries, both former German colonies: Namibia and Tanzania. This is motivated by two recent underpinning theories: the new institutional theory, which views institutions...

This paper presents new institutional measures for Zambia. Coverage is of political rights and freedoms, of property rights, and of political instability. The sample period is from 1947 to 2007. Comparison of the indices with directly comparable Zimbabwean and Malawian series, shows strong...

This study investigates the drivers of competitiveness in African economies. While the macroeconomic perspective focuses on the behavior of the real effective exchange rate (REER), and the international competition framework emphasizes export market shares (EXPS), the business strategy framework...

Climate change has been classed as the greatest and urgent global issue facing humanity today, yet the empirics of the debate remain largely muted, more so with reference to sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where the impact of warming global temperatures are forecasted to have the worst impact. This...

This paper revisits the currency crises model of Aghion, Bacchetta and Banerjeee (2000, 2001, 2004), who show that if there exist nominal price rigidities and private sector credit constraints, and the credit multiplier depends on real interest rates, then the optimal monetary policy response to...