The paper examines the link between poverty, the middle class and institutional outcomes using a new cross-country panel dataset on the distribution of income and expenditure. It uses an econometric methodology to gauge whether a larger middle class has a causal effect on policy and...

Migration is an important yet neglected determinant of institutions. This paper documents the channels through which emigration affects home country institutions and considers dynamic-panel regressions for a large sample of developing countries. The authors find that emigration and human capital...

Recent data show that the institutional content of preferential trade agreements has evolved over time. Although pre-1990s preferential trade agreements mostly focused on tariff liberalization, recent agreements increasingly contain deep provisions in diverse areas, such as intellectual property...

It is typically assumed that being hard-working or clever is a trait of the person, in the sense that it is always there, in a fixed manner. However, in an experiment with almost 600 boys in India, cues to one's place in the traditional caste order turn out to influence the expression of these...

Malawi can be understood as a microcosm of institutional reform approaches in developing countries more broadly. A common feature of such approaches, whether implemented by government or donors, is reform initiatives that yield institutions that "look like" those found in higher-performing...

The economic thinking around the role of agriculture for development has evolved since the 1950s. Over the past decades, the agriculture sector has been rediscovered as a sector with great potential for triggering growth, reducing poverty and inequality, providing food security, and delivering...

When foreign aid undermines institutional development aid recipients can exhibit the symptoms of aid "dependence" - benefiting from aid in the short term but damaged by it in the long term. The authors find that one equilibrium outcome can be high aid and weak institutions, even when donors and...