Consensus forecasts for the global economy over the medium and long term predict the world's economic gravity will substantially shift towards Asia and especially towards the Asian Giants, China and India. While such forecasts may pan out, there are substantial reasons that China and India may...

Much of the new growth literature stresses country characteristics, such as education levels or political stability, as the dominant determinant of growth. However, growth rates are highly unstable over time, with a correlation across decades of .1 to .3, while country characteristics are...

We examine the relationship between urban characteristics in 1960 and urban growth (income and population) between 1960 and 1990. Our major findings are that income and population growth move together and both types of growth are (1) positively related to initial schooling, (2) negatively...

Long before economics turned to psychology, environmentalists were nudging and framing and pushing their cause like highly gifted amateur psychologists. Their interventions seem to have changed behavior by altering beliefs, norms and preferences, but because psychological interventions are often...

We revisit the debate over whether political institutions cause economic growth, or whether, alternatively, growth and human capital accumulation lead to institutional improvement. We find that most indicators of institutional quality used to establish the proposition that institutions cause...