Using cross-country data, we find evidence for a significant negative interaction effect between democracy and inequality in determining the quality of growth-promoting institutions like rule of law. Democracy is associated with institutions of higher quality when inequality is lower.

Acemoglu, Johnson, Robinson, and Yared (2008) document that the cross-country correlation between income per capita and democracy disappears once including country fixed effects. This paper tests the hypothesis that the effect of income on democracy might differ systematically across countries....

We study the process of endogenous democratization from inefficient oligarchic systems in an economy where heterogeneous individuals can get involved in predation activities. The features of democracies are shown to be crucially related to the conditions under which democratization initially...

In this paper we investigate the causal effect of life expectancy on economic growth by explicitly accounting for the role of the demographic transition. In addition to focusing on issues of empirical identification, this paper emphasizes the role of the econometric specification. We present a...

In this paper, we provide an overview of the relationship between international migration and international trade as well as capital movements. After taking a brief historical perspective, we first investigate migration flows between two countries in a static, neoclassical context. We allow for...

We propose a unified growth theory to investigate the mechanics generating the economic and demographic transition, and the role of mortality differences for comparative development. The framework can replicate the quantitative patterns in historical time series data and in contemporaneous...

Trust in the citizens of a potential partner country may affect the decision to trade with or to migrate to a foreign country. This paper employs panel data to examine the causal impact of such bilateral trust on international trade and migration patterns. We apply instrumental variables (IV)...

This paper investigates the empirical role of violent conflicts for the causal effect of democracy on economic growth. Exploiting within-country variation to identify the effect of democratization during the "Third Wave", we find evidence that the effect of democratization is weaker than...

We study the role of trade liberalization, democratization and their interaction for technology adoption. A general equilibrium theory with heterogeneous skills predicts a complementarity between trade and political regimes. Openness should accelerate technology adoption if coupled with...

This paper theoretically and empirically analyzes the interaction of emigration of highly skilled labor, an economy's income gap to potential host economies of expatriates, and optimal public infrastructure investment. In a model with endogenous education and R&D investment decisions we show...