We explore the question of how political institutions and particularly democracy affect economic growth. Although empirical evidence of a positive effect of democracy on economic performance in the aggregate is weak, we provide evidence that democracy influences productivity growth in different...

"The rise in world trade since 1970 has raised international mobility of labor services. We study the effect of such a globalization of the world's labor markets. We find that when people can choose between wage work and managerial work, the output gains are U-shaped: A worldwide labor market...