A rapidly growing body of research applies panel methods to examine how temperature, precipitation, and windstorms influence economic outcomes. These studies focus on changes in weather realizations over time within a given spatial area and demonstrate impacts on agricultural output, industrial...

Assassinations are a persistent feature of the political landscape. Using a new data set of assassination attempts on all world leaders from 1875 to 2004, we exploit inherent randomness in the success or failure of assassination attempts to identify assassination's effects. We find that, on...

This paper presents novel evidence and analysis of the relationship between temperature and income. First, using sub-national data from 12 countries in the Americas, we provide new evidence that the negative cross-country relationship between temperature and income also exists within countries...

This paper uses international trade data to examine the effects of climate shocks on economic activity. We examine panel models relating the annual growth rate of a country's exports in a particular product category to the country's weather in that year. We find that a poor country being 1...

This paper uses annual variation in temperature and precipitation over the past 50 years to examine the impact of climatic changes on economic activity throughout the world. We find three primary results. First, higher temperatures substantially reduce economic growth in poor countries but have...

This paper investigates the remarkable extremes of growth experiences within countries and examines the changes that occur when growth starts and stops. We find three main results. First, all but the very richest countries experience both growth miracles and failures over substantial periods....

This paper presents a new framework for human capital measurement. The generalized framework can (i) substantially amplify the role of human capital in accounting for cross-country income differences and (ii) reconcile the existing conflict between regression and accounting evidence in assessing...

Getting science policy right is a core objective of government that bears on scientific advance, economic growth, health, and longevity. Yet the process of science is changing. As science advances and knowledge accumulates, ensuing generations of innovators spend longer in training and become...

This paper examines the potential impact of artificial intelligence (A.I.) on economic growth. We model A.I. as the latest form of automation, a broader process dating back more than 200 years. Electricity, internal combustion engines, and semiconductors facilitated automation in the last...

Great scientific output typically peaks in middle age. A classic literature has emphasized comparisons across fields in the age of peak performance. More recent work highlights large underlying variation in age and creativity patterns, where the average age of great scientific contributions has...