The paper considers the transformation of the political system as countries pass through the Grand Transition from a poor developing country to a wealthy developed country. In the process most countries change from an authoritarian to a democratic political system. This is shown by using the...

Long-run development (in income) causes a large fall in the share of agriculture commonly known as the agricultural transition. We confirm that this conventional wisdom is strongly supported by the data. Long-run development (in income) also causes a large increase in democracy known as the...

The Grand Transition (GT) view claims that economic development is causal to institutional development, and that many institutional changes can be understood as transitions occurring at roughly the same level (zones) of development. The Primacy of Institutions (PoI) view claims that economic...

Measures of corruption and income are highly correlated across countries. We use prehistoric measures of biogeography as instruments for modern income levels. We find that our instrumented incomes explain the cross-country pattern of corruption just as well as do actual incomes. This result...

One key focus of the on-going debate on the integration of international financial markets have been measures to lengthen the maturity of foreign debt. Short-term debt is typically considered to be volatile and thus a potential trigger of currency crises. In contrast to the vivid policy debate...