This paper studies the global variation in economic preferences. For this purpose, we present the Global Preference Survey (GPS), an experimentally validated survey dataset of time preference, risk preference, positive and negative reciprocity, altruism, and trust from 80,000 individuals in 76...

Recent empirical work has established that 'democracy causes growth'. In this paper, we determine the underlying institutions which drive this relationship using data from the Varieties of Democracy project. We sketch how incentives and opportunities as well as the distribution of political...

German unifikation hit the West German economy in a prosperous and appeared as a huge demand shock at least for the first few quarters. This combination resulted in a major increase of imports from the main trading partners of West Germany, which may have helped to cushion recessionary trends...

This paper investigates the international business cycle with new sector level data on hours and output for Canada, Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States from 1992 Q1 to 2011 Q3. We estimate a Bayesian dynamic common factor model on this disaggregate data to decompose...

This paper assesses the validity of the perception-based governance indicators used by the US Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) for aid allocation decisions. By conducting Explanatory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis of data from 1996 to 2009, we find that although the MCA purports to measure...

This paper reconsiders the theoretical foundations of EU regional policy in economics. It begins with a discussion of the line of thought of its prevalent explanation in equilibrium economics which is focusing on market failures as its key underpinning and which is the major toolkit of...

This paper studies the relationship between patience and comparative development through a combination of reduced-form analyses and model estimations. Based on a globally representative dataset on time preference in 76 countries, we document two sets of stylized facts. First, patience is...

This paper investigates the sources of structural change in the Brazilian economy in the 2000s. On that purpose, it uses the input-output structural decomposition analysis and introduces a method to correct the influence of prices on the time behavior of the technical coefficients, making them...

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the main specificities of latecomers' processes of technological development. Building on the basis of this understanding, it searches for the reasons why the conventional measures of Science and Technology (S&T) policies, usually inspired by...

Why does patience vary across individuals and countries? We provide evidence on a widely-hypothesized mechanism, namely that higher longevity fosters patience. Using data on patience for 80,000 individuals in 76 countries, this paper relates exogenous variation in longevity across...