"Artificial states are those in which political borders do not coincide with a division of nationalities desired by the people on the ground. We propose and compute for all countries in the world two new measures how artificial states are. One is based on measuring how borders split ethnic...

"While substantial research finds that financial development boosts overall economic growth, we study whether financial development disproportionately raises the incomes of the poor and alleviates poverty. Using a broad cross-country sample, we distinguish among competing theoretical predictions...

May 2000 - A higher share of income for the middle class and lower ethnic polarization are empirically associated with higher income, higher growth, more education, better health, better infrastructure, better economic policies, less political instability, less civil war (putting ethnic...