The literature on the relationship between the size of government and economic growth is full of seemingly contradictory findings. This conflict is largely explained by variations in definitions and the countries studied. An alternative approach—of limiting the focus to studies of the...

The literature on aid effectiveness has focused more on recipient policies than the determinants of aid allocation yet a consistent result is that political allies obtain more aid from donors than non-allies. This paper shows that aid allocated to political allies is ineffective for growth,...

The paper exploits the distributional dynamics and structural changes in the endogenous distribution of economic freedom across countries over time by utilizing the Rosenblatt–Parzen Kernel density estimator compared to the original distribution based on the methodology proposed by the...

For two decades, the relationship between institutions and foreign direct investment (FDI) has been receiving a growing attention as a result of increasing economic globalization and international trade promoting democracy all over the world. In this paper, we investigate the impact of...

We investigate how the ability of the government to depart from budget balance and issue debt expands the set of equilibria that can be supported using lump-sum tax-transfer instruments. We show how this depends on the restrictions that exist on the capacity to tax and make transfer payments,...

This paper analyzes the effects of government size and of the composition of public expenditure on economic development. Using the system-GMM estimator for linear dynamic panel data models, on a sample covering up to 156 countries and 5-year periods from 1980 to 2010, we find that government...

This paper develops a context-specific model (Greif, 1997) to analyze the case of failed market-oriented reform in Colombia during 1974-78. The methodology keeps the contextual specificity at a manageable level, which is no more than the institutional structure under consideration, while it...

This paper describes financial systemic risk as a pollution issue. Free riding leads to excess risk production. This problem may be solved, at least partially, either by financial regulation or by taxation. From a normative viewpoint, taxation is superior in many respects. However, reality shows...

Free riding leads to excess risk production. This problem may be solved, at least partially, either by financial regulation or by taxation. From a normative viewpoint, taxation is superior in many respects. However, reality shows that financial regulation is adopted more frequently. If the...

In this paper we study long run economic growth as a sequence of accelerations, slowdowns and crises, and estimate the role of institutions and macroeconomic policies in determining this sequence. We analyze the joint effect of policies and institutions on the frequency of the four growth...