Showing 1 - 10 of 156
In this paper, we define "The Chinese Saving Puzzle" as the persistently high national saving rate at 34-53 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the past three decades and a surge in the saving rate by 11 percentage points from 2000-2008. Using data from the Flow of Funds Accounts (FFA)...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013130462
Using newly collected national and sub-national data and historical case studies, this paper argues that differences in innovative capacity, captured by the density of engineers at the dawn of the Second Industrial Revolution, are important to explaining present income differences, and, in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013051452
Does faster economic growth increase pressure for democratic change, or reduce it? Using data for 154 countries for the period 1963-2007, we examine the short-run relationship between economic growth and moves toward and away from greater democracy. To address the potential endogeneity of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013146834
The relationship between economic and political liberalization has received a great deal of attention lately, yet the possibility of a nonlinear relationship and the role of reversals remain largely neglected. Focusing on democratization and financial reform, this paper offers evidence for a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013157255
We provide evidence that a history of democracy at the local level is associated with contemporary democracy at the national level. Auxiliary estimates show that a tradition of local democracy is also associated with attitudes that favor democracy, with better quality institutions, and higher...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013087428
Until very recently, the conventional wisdom was that the return to education was very high in Africa. However, some recent analysis point to low average returns to education in some African countries including Nigeria. Given these low returns to education, a relevant question is what causes low...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013324905
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013126913
This paper investigates the role of violent civil conflicts during the process of democratization for the quality of emerging democracies, and in particular, the protection of civil (political and economic) liberties. A simple theory in which different groups may engage in violent conflict in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009124075
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013088332
This paper explores the capability of the state to affect the individual's decision to work for free. For this purpose we combine individual-level data from the European and World Values Survey with macroeconomic and political variables for OECD member countries. Empirically we identify three...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012764665