Since 1991, Robert Barro has been a lively contributor to the Wall Street Journal and other popular financial media. Getting It Right brings together, updates, and expands upon these writings that showcase Barro's agility in applying economic understanding to a wide array of social issues....

In 1997-98, five east Asian countries -- Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand -- experienced sharp currency and banking crises. The contraction of real GDP was severe in relation to the previous history and in comparison with five east Asian countries that were less...

Economic and political developments affect religiosity, and the extent of religious participation and beliefs influence economic performance and political institutions. We study these two directions of causation in a broad cross-country panel that includes survey information over the last 20...

Two important theories of religiosity are the secularization hypothesis and the religion-market model. According to the former theory, economic development reduces religious participation and beliefs. According to the latter theory, religiosity depends on the presence of a state religion,...

Empirical research on the determinants of economic growth has typically neglected the influence of religion. To fill this gap, we use international survey data on religiosity for a broad panel of countries to investigate the effects of church attendance and religious beliefs on economic growth....

We have constructed a new and substantial data set from 1939 to 2004 on U.S.-based private voluntary organizations (PVOs) engaged in international relief and development. The universe comprises PVOs registered with the federal government (U.S. Agency for International Development since the early...