This paper examines how the dismantling of coercive institutions associated with the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994 affected the distribution of rents from natural resource exports. It identifies the interplay between coercive institutions and natural resource rents as an important...

This paper analyzes the effects of land market restrictions on structural change from agriculture to non-farm in a rural economy. This paper develops a theoretical model that focuses on higher migration costs due to restrictions on alienability, and identifies the possibility of a reverse...

This paper offers the first evidence on the prevalence of a central actor in modern growth theory?the engineer. Using newly collected sub-national, and international data as well as historical case studies, it then argues that differences in innovative capacity, captured by the density of...

Word searches of Google's library of digitized books suggest that there have been two "Poverty Enlightenments" since 1700, one near the end of the 18th century and the second near the end of the 20th. The historical literature suggests that only the second came with a widespread belief that...

This paper assesses the role of ideas in economic change, combining economic and historical analysis with insights from psychology, sociology and anthropology. Belief systems shape the system of categories ( "pre-confirmatory bias" ) and perceptions (confirmatory bias), and are themselves...

The rise of Asia is something of a myth. During 1990-2005 China accounted for 28 percent of global growth, measured at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). India accounted for 9 percent. The rest of developing Asia, with nearly a billion people, accounted for only 7 percent, the same as Latin America....

Management of common-pool resources in the absence of individual pricing can lead to suboptimal allocation. In the context of irrigation schemes, this can create water scarcity even when there is sufficient water to meet the total requirements. High-frequency data from three irrigation schemes...