This paper provides a long-term view by studying the effect of the underground or shadow economy on economic growth in the Unites States over the period 1870 to 2014. Shadow activities might spur or retard economic growth depending on their interactions with the formal sector and impacts on the...

International trade, as a major factor of openness, has made an increasingly significant contribution to economic growth. Chinese international trade has experienced rapid expansion together with its dramatic economic growth which has made the country to target the world as its market. This...

In this paper we develop a new empirical approach to uncovering the impact of social attitudes on economic development. We first show that trust of second-generation Americans is significantly influenced by the country of origin of their forebears. In the spirit of the epidemiology literature,...

This essay investigates the determinants of the growth performance of Africa. I start by illustrating a broader research agenda which accounts not only for basic economic and demographic factors, but also for the role of history and institutional development. After reporting results from...

This paper aims to provide a critical overview of the drivers that the relevant theoretical and empirical literature suggests being crucial in dealing with the challenges an emerging country may encounter in its attempts to further catch-up a higher income status, with a particular focus devoted...

We analyze how globalization has affected the sectoral anatomy of regional growth in Germany over the period 1978-2008. The aggregate German economy is characterized by a secular decline of manufacturing and a rise of modern service industries. This trend– also known as Petty's law – is not...

Defining the 'global middle class' as being neither poor nor rich in the developed world, we estimate the size of the global middle class in China and 33 other countries and analyze China's expanding middle class in international perspective. China's global middle class has grown rapidly and has...

We examine the interaction between foreign aid and binding borrowing constraint for a recipient country. We also analyze how these two instruments affect economic growth via non-linear relationships. First of all, we develop a two-country, two-period trade-theoretic model to develop testable...

This paper suggests that the weak empirical effect of human capital on growth in existing cross-country studies is partly the result of an inappropriate specification that does not account for the different channels through which human capital affects growth. A systematic replication of earlier...

In recent decades economists have turned their attention to data that asks people how happy or satisfied they are with their lives. Much of the early research concluded that the role of income in determining well-being was limited, and that only income relative to others was related to...