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...

Australia is experiencing its largest mining boom for more than a century and a half. This paper explores, from a national perspective, important economic differences that arise when a mining boom, such as the current one, is generated by export price increases (trading gains) rather than export...

In this paper we review the literature on the impact that monetary policy has on growth and employment in developing countries. Much of the literature focusses on the impact of monetary policy on inflation levels and inflation volatility, and sometimes on output (GDP) levels and volatility of...

This paper empirically tests the hypothesis that trade can act as an engine of growth using panel data for the Southern African Development Community (SADC), a regional integration agreement (RIA) organization, the central objective of whose formation was the need to accelerate, foster, and...

We explore the relationships between subjective well-being and income, as seen across individuals within a given country, between countries in a given year, and as a country grows through time. We show that richer individuals in a given country are more satisfied with their lives than are poorer...

This paper investigates the causal effect of changes in health on economic development using a long panel of European countries. Identification is based on the particular timing of the introduction of public health care systems in different countries, which is the random outcome of a political...

Several recent empirical studies have examined the gender effects of education on economic growth or on steady-state level of output using the much exploited, familiar cross-country data in order to determine their quantitative importance and the direction of correlation. This paper undertakes a...

This survey reviews the recent research on trust, institutions and growth. It discusses the various measures of trust and documents the substantial heterogeneity of trust across space and time. The conceptual mechanisms and the methods employed to identify the causal impact of trust on economic...

This paper studies the interplay between left-handedness and economic development. To explain the decline and subsequent recovery of left-handedness observed over the last few centuries in the Western world, we propose a theory in which economic development influences the prevalence of...